Dining Dollars
Dining Dollars are the tax-free 'points' associated with your CUID and are used to purchase food at any of the fourteen campus eateries. For first year students, they are part of your mandatory meal plan, while upperclassmen can purchase them either separately or through an upperclass meal plan. Upperclassmen, and first years who run out of points, can add more points to their account at any time through SSOL. Dining Dollars do not expire, they roll over to the next semester until graduation.
Dining Services offers discounts to upperclassmen who purchases points and meals in bulk over the summer in advance of the year. A student once calculated that it's possible to buy enough points so that with discount, if you use those points just to eat at John Jay Dining Hall, it would be cheaper than to purchase the equivalent number of meals. And even then you'd have the flexibility of eating elsewhere.
An advantage of using Dining Dollars to make purchases instead of Flex is that there is no tax on your dining dollar purchases.
First Year Points
First-year points were the first-year equivalent of dining dollars until their elimination in Fall 2008.