Most first-year students are required to purchase a meal plan with the Fresh Food Company (FFC) if they live in residence. The dining hall’s website says students eat “care free,” but that cannot be further from the truth. FFC options, and service times, must be improved to cater to such a variety of students.
In terms of providing for a large demographic of students, FFC lacks creativity. Students come from all over the world to study at Canada’s capital university to be met with nothing but quesadillas and Asian vegetable stir-fry that comes with meat only if you’re lucky—or unlucky.
It’s embarrassing to see how international students are represented through the same two types of food. Besides that, what about all the other ethnicities in the world? Perhaps it would not be as insulting if FFC decided to incorporate foods other than makeshift East Asian and South American cuisines.
Despite these issues, the efforts the cafeteria takes to change the mood of FFC are greatly appreciated. When the cafeteria hosted the international foods night, it was evident how much hard work was put in to ensure the satisfaction of students. Perhaps if the cafeteria organized such events more often than once a term, students would be willing to eat more than just plastic-like pizza and hard-as-rock pancakes.
Students tend to stay up later than 10 p.m, which may come as a surprise to FFC. A lot of students have classes that end at 9 p.m. It’s unfortunate that by the time they get to the cafeteria for a late dinner, many of the stations have already shut down as early as 8 p.m. And let’s not forget that many students come from cultures where dinner is served much later than 6 or 7 p.m.
For these reasons, many universities have cafeterias that remain open later than 10 p.m. to provide for hungry young adults. The University of Ottawa even has a 24-hour cafeteria.
Leaving home to come and live in a different place is difficult by itself. For many students, it is the first time they don’t have a parent making every meal for them.
It is essential the university provides decent meals, that qualify as decent for a number of different demographics, in order to ensure the post-secondary transition is a smooth one.
FFC should start with providing a better range of “international foods” and remaining open past 10 p.m, and it wouldn’t hurt if we were allowed to take more than one piece of food with us when we leave.
