Dorm food. It's one of the things on this campus that most of us hate, especially if you live on campus. In addition, the meal plans are an enormous rip off. We're paying thousands of dollars to eat (or not eat) the dining hall's creations. From pb&j stackers (with at least six pieces of bread) to chicken patty cordeon bleu, many of the meal options are unhealthy and not particularly tasty.
As a busy senior with an internship and extracurriculars, I rarely go to the dining hall. Many of my friends have since moved off campus or graduated, and I often miss meals due to my busy schedule. Additionally, the options at the cafeteria are not particularly my idea of a good meal. I have the 10 meals a week with $200 flex. I used the $200 by the end of October. Now, the caf also allows you to use one of your meals in the snack bar and get either the hot meal option or one of the other choices, salads, soups, yogurt, bagels. Although it's a nice idea, the hot meal option really doesn't work for many of the students here. It sits out all day and by the time you make it to the snack bar, there's three strands of spaghetti and a cold meatball.
Many other colleges have better meal plans which charge per item rather than meal. If that was the case here, I would save a lot of money. By eating cereal for dinner, I'm eating much less than those with a turkey dinner and veggies and still paying the same amount. One of my friends lives at MAIA and has 50 meals and $500 flex, which would be a better fit for my lifestyle. Residents who live at FSU should have more options open to them to fit their lifestyles. I'll be paying my loans for years and it's upsetting to me that much of that debt will be made up of food I never ate.
I think meal plans in general should be revised. For the most part, college students plan their lives week to week. I have the 14 meal plan, and some weeks I'll use as many as 12 meals, but there are times that I'll only use about six or seven. Different weeks bring different situations. I think there should be a way to make it so that students pay at the end of the semester for what they ate. But I know that the college forces you to commit to a meal plan before each semester. Putting aside the fact that the majority of the options are disgusting, I still don't find it fair that all of us will be paying off loans that include meals we never used. I don't see anything happening, but I still feel as though something should be done.
ReplyDeleteYet another blog post about how wretched the food service is. Maybe if the two of you went and complained they'd think you were both vegan, and ignore you. But if one of the other readers of this blog went, they'd think you're all wierd. But if you got all of your friends to go, can you imagine it? 50 people a day, walking in, yelling "Where's the beef?!?" and walking out again? They'd think it was a movement.
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