Photo by Courtney Peters
AMANDA DEDIE
News Editor
Ask and you shall receive.
The Faculty Student Association met on Monday to address the concerns about the food services on campus. The issues came to light after an online petition titled “FSA: Change the food quality at Fredonia” started circulating amongst students on social media.
The petition reached 797 signatures out of the required 1000 before the FSA Board of Directors Food Service Committee scheduled a focus group of students to meet and discuss the reasons the petition had been created in the first place.
Dr. David Herman, vice president of Student Affairs, took the floor when a student asked about which issues from the petition had been addressed.
“Some of the things in the petition had to do with employees, training, mechanical things … Those kinds of things have been passed onto FSA to be addressed,” said Herman. “There were some things that happened that were never reported. It’s kind of hard to deal with those, six months or a year after the fact. If you see something that you don’t like or is not right, there’s a manager in each dining facility, and those managers are open and receptive to concerns.”
The first issue to be brought up was the lack of variety on campus for those who are vegetarian or vegan.
“One of the things we do on the FSA website with our menus, which are up everyday, is list, with a little symbol next to each menu item, whether or not it’s gluten free, vegan or vegetarian,” said Darin Schulz, executive director of FSA.
“Another thing we also highly encourage is that if there are specific needs of a specific of individual, to meet with the Director of Dining Services, Dean Messina,” Schulz recommended.
Currently, some of the vegetarian and vegan dining options are meatless subs, meatless stir-fry, the salad bar, meatless pizza, the pasta bar, cereal and other choices that do not have a rotation schedule, unlike the entrees that are served daily.
“We need feedback on what to serve, because certainly, when it comes to vegetarian and vegan options, the options are only so much,” said Schulz. “We need to maximize the potential. We need the feedback from those who participate in that lifestyle to reach out and tell us what we can improve on.”
Students are free and urged to talk to Messina at any time about any dietary concerns in order to be helped with accommodations. Messina also has a booklet of current vegetarian and vegan food options on campus, to make students aware of the choices they have that they may not be aware of due to lack of information.
Another issue discussed was the meal plans that are provided. Some students go home every weekend with meals left over, while others have used all of theirs by Wednesday. Some campuses provide 19 meals a week and others, like Fredonia, provide 10-14 meals — something many students question, seeing as how that plan leaves them with less than two meals a day. This means they have to use their points to make up the difference, causing students to run out far before the end of the semester.
“The meal plan used to be 14 meals a week, but then it was taken down to 10 meals a week, and more points were added on,” said Schulz. “If you use, on a daily basis, what we consider a ‘normal’ consumption would be, there should still be meals or points left over.”
“We eat a lot more than you think we do,” a student, who prefers to remain anonymous, said.
“We’re trying to find a happy medium for the students who don’t eat three meals a day,” Schulz said, in response to an inquiry as to why students are allotted, on average, less than two meals a day. “However, for the next academic year, we are looking to change our meal plans around, so this is feedback we need. We can’t make it perfect for everybody, but we can look for what’s best for most.”
Next was the prices, which came about after it was mentioned that students quickly run out of points due to the prices of the food on campus.
“What a lot of people don’t realize is that a lot of that is to make up for production. We pay people to prepare things. We pay people to work. We pay people to wash dishes,” said Kyle Stolt, a senior majoring in business management and a member of the FSA Board of Directors.
“When I see someone commenting on the Facebook page saying, ‘I can get double the food at McDonald’s for half the price,’ it’s because McDonald’s is a billion-dollar company, so they can afford to make food that price.”
Wal-Mart, Schulz said, is another example of a billion-dollar company that has extreme purchasing power and, therefore, has the ability to sell its products for the cheap prices it’ known for.
“All they do is sell pre-packaged things where you pick it up, cash out and walk out with it,” said Schulz. “Most schools out there do not even allow food-plan use in a convenience store because the margin is not good. We have to make a certain margin to pay for the labor to prepare the food.”
Finally — the food quality. The topic came about due to the petition and a number of students mentioning the quality of food.
Amongst the complaints were dry burgers, moldy pasta at the C-Store, soggy fruit in the fruit cups and food that’s been left out too long.
The Board of Directors was extremely receptive to these complaints, and the rest of the session as spent brainstorming ideas to assure that only quality food would be sent out to students. However, it is important to note that changes cannot be made if the Board is not aware that there are problems — hence, the purpose of the focus group.
“We don’t have a lot of student input. We really rely on the students on the FSA board through SA or whatever and the sources they have to provide us a lot of information.” Herman said.
To share any thoughts or opinions, students can go to the manager of the dining establishment they have a statement about, or contact anyone on the “Contact” page (under “Other”) at fsa.fredonia.edu.