How USC Should Improve the Dining Halls
By: Natalie Oganesyan ‘22
After having the privilege of a full meal plan with unlimited swipes each semester, I can say without a doubt that the dining halls were vital to my survival as a college student. EVK, especially, has a special place in my heart for nighttime munchies and all my ill-timed snack and coffee breaks. However, there’s no denying that some things need to be updated or improved.
Some of these suggestions are made to be taken lightly (mostly) and others are more serious. As a disclaimer, I want to reiterate that I am so grateful to the existence of the dining halls, the staff who work so diligently to provide and care for students, and the fact that I have the privilege of not worrying about food insecurity — which constitutes a very real problem on campus.
Fresh fruit
Nothing truly showed me how deprived college students and their diets are than seeing fellow EVK-goers gawking at freshly cut strawberries. Lines formed, enemies were made as people fought over the fresh berries. It was a miracle: these strawberries didn’t come from a can or look like indistinguishable overly-preserved and sugared red blobs. I don’t blame them — I was surprised, too. This was the first and only time I had ever seen EVK have fresh fruit aside from their usual pineapples, cantaloupes, and watermelons. If you manage to get up before 10:30 a.m. and make your way over to McCarthy, you’ll see fresh berries there. However, most USC students either don’t have time, can’t wake up that early, or don’t want to go out of their way to go all the way to McCarthy when they live in places like South Residential College.
It would be great if other dining halls could have fresh fruit and more options throughout the day. This would particularly be beneficial in encouraging college students to eat healthier, especially when their diet usually consists of pizza and Ramen noodles.
Iced coffee
I will preface this part with the statement that, yes, I am, in fact, a coffee snob. With that said, I can’t be the only one who’s gone to a dining hall in the sweltering heat (the month of August is actually hell) in hopes of acquiring a cold refreshing caffeinated beverage only to find that doing so at the dining halls is — quite frankly — impossible. Your efforts are completely futile as you either end up with watered down coffee or milk with coffee in it rather than the other way around. Dear Parkside, EVK, and McCarthy, all I want is to use iced coffee as a meal replacement (this is totally a joke, eat healthy y’all) — please let me do so.
Longer hours
I can’t be the only college student who gets cravings for rice at 12 a.m., right? I understand that it’s costly and tiring to maintain all three dining halls until the late hours of the night, but I want to offer up a solution. USC should set aside one dining hall, most likely EVK, to have extended hours until at least 2 a.m. In accomplishing this task, USC should specifically hire a late night crew and pay them a special rate to serve students.
During finals, each dining hall gets one day where it is open from 12 a.m. to 2 a.m. USC acknowledges that people stay up late during those times to study and need to fuel their bodies in order to do so properly. But, let’s be realistic. Most students, with the workload they’re given (which is overwhelming and grounds for a separate blog), already study late into the night on an everyday basis or at the bare minimum during midterms. We should have at least one dining hall that’s open after 10 p.m.
Parkside hours
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve showed up to Parkside at 3:30 p.m. after class with a stomach ready to receive food, only to be extremely disappointed and begrudgingly have to go to McCarthy when I was getting all geared up for the food and atmosphere of Parkside only. Why? Why is Parkside the only dining hall that is closed from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m.? Is there a rational answer for this? I demand answers.
Better waste initiatives and more consideration for food insecure students
This one is actually serious. Time and time again I’ve seen people throw away whole plates of untouched food and have been guilty of this at times. Wasting food is a particular epidemic akin to the privileged and wealthy. All dining halls, though they conduct waste audits and encourage less waste production, need more concrete and specific initiatives to use the food wasted for good. The dining halls should donate extra food and set up ways to categorize food leftovers based on if people touched parts of them or not.
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