Many of you know by know, Red Radish (one of our on-campus dining venues) has sparked a lot of negative attention in the past four days due to a few incidents. It was first brought to people’s attention on Facebook where several members of Cal Poly’s 2019 Class group posted some pretty disgusting photos of what seems to be a beetle and larvae in their salads. There has been many posts mocking and making fun of the incident, but as a student myself, I know I take this incident very seriously.

Obviously neither myself nor any other student at Cal Poly is okay with this, but honestly it might be what we need. Cal Poly has always struggled in the dining area and students have always had complaints. It maybe now that since there is an obvious problem with campus dining, and faculty is starting to be aware – this means there could be change, finally!

Ellen Curtis, the Director of Marketing and Communication for Cal Poly Corporation who operates Campus Dining, posted in one of Cal Poly’s group pages about her concerns.

She stated that “after thorough investigation, it has been determined that one box of Kale had debris (dirt, bugs, eggs etc.). Our kale is organically grown and while the grower takes every pre-caution to thoroughly clean their product these occurrences can happen. Campus Dining has contacted the grower to make them aware of the situation.”

This shows that Cal Poly is actually talking to the grower and not just telling the students to deal with it. This is the first time since I’ve been at Cal Poly that I’ve seen an authoritative figure take action in the campus dining area. Cal Poly and its dining program realize that this is okay and they are willing to try and fix it and correct their wrong. I know that the people who found the beetle and larvae aren’t too happy with Cal Poly dining and will probably never eat at Red Radish, but I hope they can see that it has brought light to a problem-allowing it to get fixed.

We can only hope that Cal Poly is doing its best to prevent things like that from happening again and that they really are listening to their students. There is obviously a problem and we the students can only expect that people like Ellen Curtis aren’t just saying these things to us because they are the Director or Marketing and are realizing that a bad connotation now comes along with the word Red Radish. The only thing that we can do is voice our opinion, bring to light some problems, and hope that Cal Poly is actually working to find solutions. Events like this are definitely not something that we the students hope to happen, but in the end it might be what we need in order to get some things changed in the campus dining area. So Cal Poly campus dining, we the students have made our move, what will be yours?