E-BOARD OF THE LEADER
To the Faculty Student Association,
We understand it is impossible to please everyone. We understand there will always be complaints. We understand operating under a budget is frustrating. We are not asking for major overhauls, we are asking for small changes that significantly improve the lives of our fellow students. Fredonia’s administration wants to increase student recruitment and, more importantly, student retention. We believe these improvements would significantly enhance that effort.
We understand there are staffing issues and that serious consequences result from this. We understand “staffing issues” is a blanket excuse — anyone who has worked at a restaurant with fewer hands than needed knows this. We want to know what FSA is doing and plans on doing to resolve staffing issues on a long-term basis. We would like to be aware of what training protocols FSA plans on putting in place for new and long-term employees to help decrease the amount of student complaints concerning the quality of food. Procedures particularly on allergy safety need to be emphasized; no student should have to experience an allergic reaction because food was not prepared properly. Employees should be able to catch when an item is overcooked, undercooked or prepared inadequately before it served to a student.
We noticed FSA added allergy information on their website so that students could have easier access to it. We appreciate this positive change. However, if students are paying thousands of dollars to have meal plans, they should not have to download a document for every dining facility on campus. They should be able to pick up a pamphlet near any campus dining facility that describes allergen concerns in all campus dining facilities. Physical pamphlets and symbol signage on some menus for vegan and vegetarian options already exist, so we do not anticipate this to be a challenging implementation. To save costs on printing, signage with QR codes to the online pamphlets could be made as well. Students should not have to worry about having an allergic reaction because there is not readily available allergy information.
We appreciate FSA’s consideration and effort to add a variety of vegan options to the food items they sell — many restaurants lack this option, further alienating vegans and those with dairy allergies. Although there are options available at every dining facility on campus, the minimal number of options can become pedestrian for students. We suggest taking the vegan items already sold in cafes and the Convenience Store and additionally selling them in Willy C’s. The reasoning behind this is that Willy C’s is open later than any dining facility on campus and selling those items would extend the availability of a greater variety of vegan and gluten-free options. Furthermore, these items are already made on campus, so it would be a matter of making more of the food items already prepared and sold as opposed to finding new recipes.
Our final request is that the FSA website, FSA.fredonia.edu, is thoroughly copy-edited to ensure the information provided is up-to-date, that there are no typos and that the spelling of words is consistent. For example, as of Nov. 4, 2021, the FSA Employment Current Openings page refers to the dining facility Willy C’s as Centre Pointe. Centre Pointe was renamed to Willy C’s over three years ago. Furthermore, the page about Willy C’s spells the dining facility two ways: “Willy C’s” and “Willey C’s.” Numerous other factual, spelling and grammatical errors can be found throughout the website. Considering FSA is associated with an institution of higher learning and that the website represents FSA, noticeable errors are unacceptable. We suggest partnering with an editing class or giving internship credit to a qualified student to resolve the text issues on the website.
Putting more effort into finding, maintaining and training staff, making allergy information more easily available, increasing the amount of spaces to purchase vegan food, and updating and copy-editing the website comprise our primary requests. We do not think these asks are unreasonable to implement and hope FSA takes our suggestions seriously. Students of SUNY Fredonia are FSA’s employees and FSA’s customers, after all.
Sincerely,
E-board of The Leader