Dining Options Fall Short

The first week of freshman year, the number of dining options so readily available seemed overwhelming.

An all you can eat buffet, a soup and sandwich place, café/bakery, a pizza place, a pasta and salad option, a Panini stand, and a nightclub for the late night munchies all located on campus? It was mindboggling.

However, this excitement lasted about a month before the dining options became monotonous. Not very late into the first semester, younger students with large meal plans were already traveling off campus to look for alternatives and stock their refrigerators with food that could be made in their college houses.

First-years seemed especially bothered when the newness of the dining areas wore off and the quality of food began a descent, as they are forced to pay for the largest meal plan available, which consists of 225 meal swipes and $120 Flex and costs over $2,000 a semester.

The entire student body was greeted by a few surprise changes in dining options upon returning to campus this spring semester.

The Restaurants at Ben Franklin, or D-Hall, featured a new Mongolian Grill option at the World Affairs station, relocating the salad bar to the corner of the room, and the Pasta Feature of the Day was replaced by a healthy Salad Feature of the Day at Restaurante Verde.

While Flavors and Jazzman’s remained relatively unchanged, the  former Pandini’s received a complete overhaul. Panini Junction underwent a few small modifications, and two new “retail outlets,” Slice of Life and Salsa Rico, took up residence at the old Pandini’s stands. These two changes seemed to create the most buzz and the most excitement as students returned from winter break.

It finally seemed as if someone was working to improve eating options on campus, and it is commendable that someone noticed a change was needed. However, while the new options do indeed offer a welcome change of pace, they do not solve all the current problems. Some of these problems run deeper, and some of the goals of the new offerings fall flat.

Salsa Rico offers a new twist to campus dining with its Mexican options, but the high prices are deterring. Paying extra to add meat to any option, including the DipDeals, seems counterproductive. The long lines are also frustrating and will continue to be until the novelty of this new option wears off.

Slice of Life is not a huge change from Pandini’s, and offers greasy, overpriced options. It is also unclear why some sandwiches are offered as DipDeals while others of equal price are not. This change is not as drastic as it seems, disappointingly.

In many ways, the addition of the Mongolian Grill to D-Hall is the most convenient of the changes. Its location is easily accessible and it offers a variety of affordable choices, as the rice, noodles, sauces, and fixings can all be interchanged for a different dish every time. It does a fairly decent job of breaking up the monotony of D-Hall when the line is not unbearably long.

So, while the World Affairs space is being put to good use, a new location for the salad bar needs to be determined. The current set up is a nuisance as students can only fix their salads one, possibly two, at a time instead of moving down a line. This makes for a ridiculously long line at the salad bar. Additionally, the upkeep has been lacking. It is not rare during the busiest hours for the salad bar to run out of lettuce.

The other options at D-Hall are still lacking as well. Still more variety is needed to really make a difference, especially for first-years, who eat there frequently out of necessity and College policy.

The most important dining issue that needs to be addressed is the food offered during exam times. The Flapjack Fest was undoubtedly the highlight of the end of semester dining options, and it consisted of easily made breakfast foods.

At a time when visiting the dining hall was one of the rare study breaks of the crazy, stressful, pre-exam days, D-Hall should have been more inviting and accommodating. Instead, the food options were even slimmer than usual as the facilities ran out of different items, some as simple as rolls, and both sides of Kivo stopped offering their daily dinner dishes.

Many students were forced to seek off-campus choices to keep up morale and stamina. This is unfair considering the amount of money first-years are forced to pay for a large number of meal swipes and the amount of money other students pay for the convenience of having meal swipes to use at easily accessible locations on campus during classes.

While it is refreshing to see the Diplomatic Congress taking an interest in this plight, the food dilemma is far from fixed. It will take much more cooperation and effort to make the dining options more accessible, palatable, and worth the price.