Students don’t get moneys’ worth
New students have enough to worry about without being concerned about where their next meal is coming from. Why doesn’t The Main and other campus eateries have schedules that reflect the needs of the students?
COMMENTARY
Janelle Stecklein

The cafeteria seems to have always received mixed emotions. Upper classmen have told me by the end of the semester that I, as a freshman, will be tired of the food on campus.

But how can I be tired of the food on campus when they never seem to be open? Whenever I go to eat, The Main’s doors always seem to be closed. The food service does not focus on the hours of the students it serves.

For example, this past Saturday, my first weekend on campus, I walked to dinner at 6:05pm only to find that The Main had closed down for the day. Other freshmen were also shocked that The Main closes so early.

Bryant Currie, Dining Services director of operations, said the cafeteria bases its hours on “traffic patterns in the Student Center” and that TCU is a “ghost town” on Saturdays.

I was also shocked to see, on The Main operating schedule I had to go online and print out after missing the dinner hours on Saturday, that The Main doesn’t even open until 11 a.m. on weekends. If students have an early morning commitment they have to go without breakfast, which is not healthy according to just about every doctor, athletic coach and teacher, who says repeatedly, “Eat a good breakfast before you come to class.”

Also, The Main closes at 8 p.m. Monday through Thursday. This may sound reasonable, but there are people with night classes and many students who work until well after eight. So where are we supposed to get a hot healthy meal besides pizza?

Currie told me that 95 percent of TCU’s students eat before 8 p.m., and that Frogbytes does provide hot healthy food to those who miss the normal hours.

As mentioned above, if you miss the inconvenient hours of The Main, you are encouraged to go to Frogbytes, the “convenience” store. If the administrators consider it a “convenience” store, they are sorely mistaken. Several students have told me that they call it the “inconvenience store.” Sure it is right on campus, but the food costs almost twice as much as it does at Albertson’s, which is right down the block. When I approached Currie about this, I was told it is an “unfair comparision.”

It is much cheaper on my wallet and food card balance to go to Albertson’s, where I can at least get more for my money, and buy something healthy.

The one positive thing about the cafeteria is the staff. The staff has always been polite and helpful to me. When I first went into The Main, an employee came up to me and helped me get acclimated to food, and the places where I can find everything.

Unfortunately, this positive attribute is shadowed by the fact that The Main does not keep the same hours all week. It is difficult to keep track of the cafeteria hours on top of everything else that we need to remember.

Since all freshman are required to spend at least $866 on food, the least the cafeteria could do is give us the opportunity to use some of that money by keeping the same hours the whole week, or improve by surveying students who use the cafeteria and find out when they prefer to eat, so that they are catering to the student’s needs, not their own.

Janelle Stecklein is a freshman journalism and political science major from Plano.