Marina Dining Hall: Charging Per Plate

University of Bridgeport's students eating
 photo courtesy by universityofbridgeport.com

Marina Dining Hall will start charging students per plate starting the 2012 fall semester due to an amount of issues going on with Sodexo.



Sodexo president, Roger Clements, believes that by changing the way UB's dining ahll charges students, students will start to care about not wasting any food.

"I've asked the head of Marina Dining Hall to run some stats on how much food these students have waste on a daily average and the results are truly alarming," said Clements. "I just can't understand why a student would plan on eating four plates of food if they end up eating only 1/4 of their portion servings."

Sodexo logo, courtesy by sodexo.com

Rick Grimes, General Manager of Marina Dining Hall, said he is also shocked as to how much students don't eat the food that is served in the campus.

"My chiefs work their butts off to deliver the best food in this campus," Grimes said. "It is said, depressing and overall horrendous for students to waste food like it's not a care in the world. This food is fantastic and I can't understand why students wouldn't want to eat it as much as they want to waste it."

Another issue that Sodexo is trying to fix is how much students are eating as well. According to UB's Health Clinic, some students are taking in a 3,000 calorie intake on a daily basis. Kim O'Neill, UB's health Nutrient Specialist believes some of the students are endangering their well being by over eating the food.

"I mean I know it's college and you're introduced to making food choices on your own for the first time," O'Neill said. "But come on, who in their right mind would want to stuff their faces with three cheese burgers, five servings of French fries, two slices of pizza and six cookies?"

O'Neill explains that if a person keeps on taking in high amounts of their calorie intake, numerous health complications will arise later on including strokes, heart attacks and constipation.

Measuring food waste, photo courtesy by sodexo.com

Of course with the concern of the student's health, Marina Dining hall is also having problems with their food budget. due to the amount of students wasting food and a number of few whom over eat, marina Dining Hall is starting to run out of money when it comes to buying their food from Sodexo.

"It's bad enough that we have people that waste the food and other people who are being very greedy eat a week's worth of food in two days. It's even worse when we start running out of food a lot sooner than we are expected to. So the cooks and I had to serve the students breakfast for dinner on a couple of occasions," explains Grimes.

According to the UB Dining Service's website, staring the fall semester the prices for food will change. For breakfast it will be five dollars per plate, lunch will be ten dollars per plate and dinner will be fifteen dollars per plate.

Steven Cummings, a Health Science Major, agrees with Marina's decision on charging students per plate.

"I mean it really is annoying standing in line to get a sandwich for a good twenty minutes because someone is ordering five different sandwich combos," said Cummings.

Patrick Storm, a Music Major, disagrees with Marina's choice of charging and thinks it's stupid and unnecessary.

"It's bad enough the Hub is charging five bucks for one and half tacos. I would hate Marina to start raising up their food costs as well," Storm said. "That's why I always eat there, because in less than a week, all of the dining dollars for the Hub runs out and I rely on the Marina Dining Hall to feed me all day every day."

*FOLLOWING ARTICLE WAS PUBLISHED ON THE 2012 APRIL FOOLS ISSUE OF THE SCRIBE