College food

frazzled1
Sat, 31 Oct 2009 09:10:07 +0000

When we were at a Vanderbilt Family Weekend, we attended an open discussion with school administrators. The dad of a student who was dissatisfied with the meal program stood up and asked why, at such a prominent, well-off school, dining should lag behind other student services. The chancellor called the head of dining services up to the podium, and he made a great point. He asked us each to think of our favorite restaurant - and then to imagine how we’d feel if we had to eat every meal there every single day.

I can’t get over the way dining services have improved since I was in college. There was one dining hall, and it was high school cafeteria food three times a day. Institutional, processed, gloppy. (Though it was there that I developed a taste for Diet Coke - okay, it was Tab then. I grew up in a house in which you had to run a fever of 101 to get a ginger ale. And colas? Never!)

My kids have attended both private and public unis. They started out pleased with their options, but tired of them fairly soon and used their flex points at nearby “real” restaurants quickly. It’s interesting to me that so many unis have on-campus restaurant franchises. Quizno’s, at the Student Center, is my youngest d’s enduring favorite.