By Evan Cooke
Once upon a time, I was 8 years old.
Pizza, as far as I was concerned, was one of the best things this planet had ever invented. And if I had been able to eat it every meal of every day, I would have been a very happy camper.
Fast forward to now, and that same thought could turn a year in college into a nightmare. But that’s exactly what’s happening to many of Loyalist students who are looking for something other than subs for any meal after 3:00 in the afternoon.
Aramark, the college’s newly contracted food service provider, fresh off their unveiling of a brand new Subway outlet in the cafeteria, also decided to make it the only option for students who are looking for food in the mid-afternoon and evening. This poses quite a problem – especially to students that ate up Aramark’s new, tax-free meal cards, who rely on the school and not groceries for their meals. Subway for dinner every night might appeal to the child in all of us, but isn’t realistic and isn’t fair.
Aramark says that their “Res Express” service solves this problem by making a few select menu items available for delivery from 8 PM to midnight from Monday to Thursday. Unfortunately, this service is far from a valid alternative. What those select menu items actually are isn’t all that clear – it isn’t published online anywhere, the hours of operation seemingly advertise this as a late night study snack option, and getting delivery every night is hardly financially feasible for the majority of students. This all means that students have more food access at 11:30 at night than they do at an average 6:00 dinnertime – which I have a pretty hard time believing is a legitimate preference by students.
What it’s really come down to is two different time periods, Before Subway and After Subway (B.S. & A.S.). On September 9, B.S, right in the midst of the meal card fire sale, Aramark sent an email to students that listed the hours of operation in the Kente Food Court as 7:30 AM-8 PM. While this might have been true then, Subway opened its doors less than a week later, and was promoted to the exclusive food choice in the 3-8 PM timeslot. Give Aramark the benefit of the doubt and say that they didn’t know this change was going to happen days before it did, but for them to just make that change out of the blue makes this false advertising. Whether or not the main cafeteria would be open past 3 might not be a big deal for some people, but it was a deal breaker for many people looking to buy more high-priced meal cards.
According to Bill Walsh, VP of Enrolment Management & Student Services, Aramark says that the issue is simple – they simply can’t afford to keep the cafeteria open longer. But if they’re running an express delivery service already, they have employees working at that time. While a fully operational cafeteria might not be realistic, it’s hard to believe they couldn’t partially open up more options for students and still be successful as a business.
Walsh says that Loyalist is stuck between a rock and a hard place – while they’re aware of the concerns, Aramark is still performing the contractual obligations that they agreed to last summer, and aren’t doing anything wrong.
So what we need now is some common sense mixed in with some compromise. Sure, losing money stinks, but so does eating a sandwich for dinner every single night. Companies like these are hired to serve the students, and the students have spoken. There’s a solution to be found here, now’s the time to step up and find it.