Mike Masten
Staff Writer
The scenario has happened to us all. In fact, the regularity of it is actually quite amusing. It’s a late school night, and you are working diligently at whatever your classes demand. You are hungry, but look at the clock and, knowing that the Cafe serves dinner until 7:30, you decide to wait a little longer and eat at 7. Well, sure enough, 7 rolls around and you are at the Cafe, ready to dig into the tortellini and garlic bread so promised on the menu, when you realize, to your chagrin, that the station is closed. All that are left are hot dogs and hamburgers.
As you walk away, looking at your reflection in the grease of the french fries that you are once again forced to eat, you think what every Pepperdine student thinks: “I pay $40,000 a year, and I can’t even get food when I want it!”
Students have so much going on in their lives every day of the week that to be expected to eat at a certain time each day is almost impossible. Pepperdine has answered this problem by offering the meals over the course of a few hours. This allows students who have late classes or lots of homework to be able to eat at whatever time is comfortable or available to them. Sounds great right? It would be, except that the Cafe never has food when it should. If one were to go to the Cafe and actually ask one of the attendants there what time dinner is served on a weekday, they will tell you it is from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. If that is the case, why is it that on numerous occasions it is impossible to get a decent meal anywhere on campus at 7 p.m.?
Beyond the fact that lack of food is extremely annoying, it is also hampering the health and academic drive of many of the students. It does not take a philosopher to know that in order for students to do well in their academics, they need to be in an atmosphere that promotes academic excellence. This means above anything, they need to eat well.
Pepperdine University stresses the importance of achieving academic excellence in its mission statement. If the university is truly “committed to the highest standards of academic excellence,” shouldn’t administrators be looking out for the welfare and health of their students? Maybe the university should take the required Health and Lifestyles class to learn the effects of not eating properly. As growing students, we need food that will give us all the nutrition we need. Without proper nutrition and healthy eating, our minds will not be able to function and grow in the ways it takes to learn all the information we need to be successful in class.
So what can the university do to fix this problem? The answer is quite simple — give the students hours of operation on which they can rely. If the schedule says that dinner will be served until 8 p.m., then it makes sense that at 7:45 one should be able to go in and get the dinner promised on the menu. If the Cafe doesn’t have food because it ran out, then the university is not buying enough food for its students, that should not even be a problem in the first place.
The purpose of the university is to create an atmosphere for academic excellence and in order to achieve this, we need to eat properly. Give us the proper food at the proper hours, and we will give the university the academic excellence which it so strongly demands.
1-27-2005
