Drexel University Dining

James Kirwan and Joey Mannarino John Borczon English 102 2/28/13 Drexel eat Not Meeting Basic Needs As any college student knows, the quality of a schools eat hall is extremely important. To be successful as students, it is an absolute must(prenominal) that a student is strong and si bleaky. One of the keys to being strong and healthy is a healthy and balanced diet, filled with a variety of fodders. At Drexel, we ar being deprived of this necessity. While we do have a dine hall that is open for most of our day, actually eating thither is an issue. For all freshmen at Drexel, a eat political platform is involve.There are tether different traditional meal plans, ranging from a hefty $1,830 to $1,915. All tierce traditional plans revolve around the Handshumacher eat Center. The custom meal plans withal provide discordant options, just in the end, focus around the Handshumacher eat Center as well. The meal plans are exposerageously expensive however, considering the nurture most students are pay, this is non the issue. The issue is the quality of food in the eat hall. It is one matter for students not to enjoy the food that they eat, only even more of a concern when the food they are eating is un expert to be eaten.Just in the last few weeks, at least(prenominal) 10 people have been bed ridden for days due to, what they believe, to be food poisoning from the Handshumacher Dining Center. This is a major enigma. Once a person has promise a food-borne illness, participating in academics and/or cheating(a) activities becomes nearly impossible, affecting students lives and grades severely. With students potentially in danger of becoming spue and being affected in their academics, this is more than just disliking the dine hall. The Handschumacher Dining Center is not scrub by any means at all.After eating there a few ages, occurrences such as decision a single black hair in our mashed potatoes and flakes of crude in our drinks became a re gular or distinguish. When trying to get soda from the soda cable car there would be various particles coming from the machine itself. Once it comes out of the dirty machine, it will therefore go into one of the glass cups provided by the eat summation. These are rarely cleaned properly and there al styluss muscae volitantes and other residue on them (see below). pic This is in any shell a major problem with the utensils and even the plates.There is simply no excuse for this, as we are paying a good amount of money for the dine hall. The entire dining hall environment is a disgrace. Upon entering the dining hall, you are corpus down a flight of stairs into a dull color in basement with next to no natural lighting. The orbit where the food is wide-awake for the students is not visible, and based on the food that is served, probably for good reason. Once our tray is filled with whatever sub-par food they have active for us, we are to go into a very gravely designed pos e area. The eating environment is far from pleasant.Half the challenge is finding a instrument panel that is clean enough to eat at, as the tables are not regularly cleaned off when students leave them. One could argue that it is the students responsibility to custody the tables clean, but this is simply illogical. If there are people being paid to clean the tables, a student is not going to go out of their expression in making true their area is cleaned. The lack of cleanliness of the dining center extends beyond the seating area. If what we see out in the seating area is bad, what goes on behind the scenes is even worse.In a December 2010 Pennsylvania fodder Code inspection, there were mouse feces found in the kitchens and retentivity areas, fruit flies observed underneath a self-serve beverage rank and lack of a dedicated sink for mop-water disposal, among other violations (Strauss). The triplicity, Drexels news report, has various accounts recorded nearly the Handschuma cher Dining Center, one of which includes a student see a live mouse running around. In these conditions, it is just intimately impossible for any food prepared to possibly be sanitary.This January, The Triangle published another article that discusses students receiving food poisoning and even the norovirus from the Handschumacher Dining Terrace. Norovirus is a highly contagious virus usually transmitted finished undercooked food and occasionally direct contact with an infected person. The student who contracted the norovirus ended up being sent to the ER. In the Drexel Facebook group there are posts weekly that complain about food poisoning or stomach aches caused from this dining hall. One of those students is Maggie Heath-Bourne.She personally knows a good deal of people who have gotten mould from this dining center. She was unable to attend her Wednesday classes. Maggie also positive that the dining center caused her illness because she had been really rushed at the beginni ng of the week and only had time to go to the Hans on Monday and Tuesday, and she got sick on Wednesday. Since the university basically requires its freshman to eat at this dining hall, something postulate to be done. There is no reason students should be scared for their health by eating at their own dining hall.The issues above are suddenly unacceptable for our dining hall, but in actuality, these are issues face up by quite a few dining halls around the country. In examining the various dining halls that have had problems there seems to be one frequent thread- the food production company Sodexo. We asked friends of ours how satisfied they were with their dining halls. Those who were happy with their dining halls went to schools that did not have Sodexo. Most of these students dining halls were controlled by Aramark. In bring forward research, it became apparent that Sodexo is the root of our problems at Drexel.The same types of problems that we had at Drexel were faced by s tudents at Fordham University, who also contracts Sodexo. An excerpt of the inspection read The inspections unearthed evidence of mice, roaches and awry(p) storage of food, shortcomings that placed Fordham eateries in the lowest grade bracket (Ram Online). This is concerning not only for Fordham students but for any school that allows Sodexo to control its dining environment. The case at Fordham got so out of hand that the dining hall was required to be shut down for a little while. Once it was lastly opened back up, the tudents decided to hold a protest. However, this protest got them absolutely nowhere. At Drexel, there has to be a solution that we can bunk to get a decent selection of food in our dining hall. At Fordham University, the method of a protest failed, as Sodexo still stayed as the schools main food supplier. Sodexo claims on its website that it has a shape up of students that overview its dining services. This board of students does not have a exercise from Drexel University on it. If we had some input about our dining hall through and through this board, maybe there would be some action taken.Another solution we could discharge is introducing a board of various students that oversees and works with the kitchen staff to make sure the meals are both well prepared and well varied. These students would need to be Drexel students who frequent the dining hall. By being on this board, they will realise no benefits towards their dining hall plans or anything of the selects. It would be a only transparent board also. This way, students would have an outlet to go to to complain about the problems in this dining hall. The way it is set up now, it is extremely unassailable to get a meeting with anyone in the dining hall.For the purpose of this paper we attempted to set up a meeting with the director of residential living on campus. It took us about an entire month to chronicle a meeting with this man. For a campus environment that can be second- rate to all, the food staff needs to be much more brotherly. It is nonsense(a) that we have to wait so long for a meeting with soulfulness who can make a change for us. This student board could deal Sodexo until its contract with Drexel University is over. However, as soon as possible getting Sodexo out of Drexels dining hall would be ideal.This company has proven time and time again throughout the country that it cannot maintain a dining environment. Sure, it can provide food, but not good or safe food. This student leadership board could take a look at other food companies that are doing a better job self-colored both students needs and also pass health inspections. Drexel has decent dining options outside of the dining hall. There is a second dining option, accessible only through our dining dollars which is kept fairly clean. The food choices are from chains across the country. The election of food is not the best, but at least it is kept clean. This would probably not be th e direction for our dining hall to go in. Drexel has a faculty dining hall, run by Sodexo, which is treated in a different manner entirely then the Handschumacher Dining Center. Why should the students be getting second rate food when they are paying for a meal plan? Also, Drexel just legitimate a large scale grant that is going to a overhaul project for the area outside of the main building. With this money, Drexel could have begun production on a dining hall run by the 12th lane Caterers, also a Drexel company.With so many possible solutions why do we allow Drexel to continue to feed us the same dirty and poorly made food? We have to find some sort of way to make sure that Drexel implements the students opinions into choosing a new plan and direction for its dining hall. To start, we must set up some sort of board for students to voice their opinions directly to Sodexo. From there, we must see what we can do to get Sodexo out, and using this same board of students, create a new solution that pleases all students and also follows health standards. No matter what we do, we cannot keep going in the manner that we are going.