You've just walked out of your Intro. to Psychology study group. And you're hungry. Real hungry.
All you've had to eat today was a banana, an Odwalla bar from Outtakes and a Nathan's hot dog, removing $11.45 from your dining dollar balance.
The hot dog was covered with chili and cheese. It made you sick. You wince and renew your conviction to run tomorrow.
You wander into the Student Center. It's 8:30. You can't eat Chick-fil-A--peanut allergy and, besides, you're tired of salads. Everything else is closed.
So where do you eat?
You could walk to the Village, but, to continue this hypothetical, let's say you live in the Quad and you know everything you want in the Village closes at 9. Plus it's a long-ish walk.
You almost go but decide against, going to bed hungry, with still $11.06 of the daily $22.51 the University's website says an on-campus student should spend to use all $995 of his or her required dining plan by the end of the semester.
According to the University's website, the dining plan, $995 for on- and $300 for off-campus residents per semester, "must be required so that monies can be invested back into the facilities and programs." Which makes sense and is probably true--a dining facility needs "monies."
But Auburn's dining program does not "provide(s) convenience and variety allows students to focus on their studies and adjust to college life more easily, as well as provides social support systems," as the website says one sentence earlier.
Convenience?
Everything in Terrell closes at 3 p.m. Monday through Thursday and 2 p.m. Friday. The latest restaurant open in the Student Center is Chick-fil-A, closing at 9 p.m. Monday through Thursday. Au Bon Pain closes at 7 and Papa John's at 8. All three close at 4 p.m. Friday. Foy eateries close at 2:30 p.m.
The Village does offer two late-night options, Cub Stop C-Store and End Zone Diner. So, bravo there. But every other Village option is only open till 9 at the latest.
A quick count shows at least 10 dinner options. But how many of those options offer healthy food?
A lot of the dining options--Nathan's, Papa John's, Chick-fil-A, Plainsman Pizza, etc.--are fast food or offer similarly unhealthy food. A diet consisting solely of these options, with the fat and the calories, cannot be healthy, especially when a student is expected to eat a $22.51 portion daily.
Or how about food tailored to special diets?
Last spring, Jonathan Reeves, a freshman this fall, asked for, and was granted, exemption from the mandatory meal plan. Reeves has an auto-immune disorder which forces him to eat a gluten-free diet.
"Well, I definitely wish there were more places. A salad at Chick-fil-A is the only place I know of where I can get something, so that's pretty limited," Reeves told The Plainsman last spring (Feb. 25 edition).
Three Auburn students have gone so far as to sue Chartwells, the company that handles Auburn's dining program, claiming mandatory dining plan violates section 6-5-60 of the Code of Alabama (which more or less claims the University's program is a monopoly).
Auburn should be commended for giving the students dining options on campus, but those options would better serve the student body if they were more diverse, open later, healthier and, perhaps one day, nonmandatory.
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