Flex points

Flex points are an Oberlin pseudo-currency that can be used to pay for stuff at the Decafe and to get you into dining hall meals when you run out of weekly meals.

Flex points are not officially called "Flex Dollars" because there is no 1:1 correspondence between the number of dollars that you seem to pay for your meal plan and the number of flex points you get. Nonetheless, they are frequently referred as "flex dollars," " flex doodles," or simply "flex."

If you are on a regular meal plan (i.e. you eat at a traditional dining hall, not a co-op), then you have a preset number of flex points that will appear on your ID Card either all at once at the beginning of the semester, or more commonly, 40-80 at a time near the first Monday of each month. ResLife (or whoever does it) is notoriously variable as to what exact day new flex points appear, so it usually takes everyone a few days to realize that they have more. Once people figure it out, they usually head down to DeCafe for a smoothie, a salad, a sandwhich, candy, or whatever they've been craving for the last 2 weeks since they ran out of flex.

Every now and then, there's some sort of bug in the system and you can charge anything you want to flex. The college gets you back by putting it on your term bill.