The majority opinion is that campus food is awful. Whether your food is just flavorless and bland, or something more serious is wrong (like a screw in your pizza, or glass in your omelette), very few people would reflect positively on their experiences with on-campus dining. And that's really no one's fault.
This food is being produced in bulk for mass consumption. Employees receive little to no training for their jobs and are expected to simply learn how to make all of this food through experience alone. This would be okay, except most employee lifetimes are set at a four-year maximum. The few students who begin their employment with CAS as a freshman and finish as seniors may have had enough time to accumulate the experience required to make consistently decent meals, but the vast majority do not. Just like McDonald's, campus food can't be good because it can not be crafted with care. The difference between on-campus meals and McDonald's is that the golden arches can stuff their food with enough salt to make it palatable, and you aren't forced to give all of your money to McDonald's before you move into an area so that you can only eat at McDonald's.
And that's the crux of the real problem with campus dining. Required meal plans. When a college forces its students to get a meal plan, they are institutionalizing and endorsing monopoly. There is no competition for on-campus food, and because of that on campus food doesn't have to be good; they already have your money.
And yet, prices are still over-inflated. That's because campus food is run by a separate organization from the college. Campus Auxiliary Services (CAS) is a non-for-profit organization that provides all of the food for Geneseo's dining halls. What I don't understand is why a non profit charges $7 for a cheeseburger. It feels as though prices are so steep in an effort to make money, but this can't possibly be the case. And it isn't as though the mark up is going towards compensating student employees properly. I manage a whole station and am still only paid minimum wage. Shifts that should probably be a full six hours are laid out to be five and a half. I'm not saying that this is done intentionally to prevent allowing paid 15-minute breaks, but it is at six hours that you are required by law to be allowed one.
So, you think prices are way to steep, and the goings on of the CAS business world are shadowy enough that you want to stage a boycott or something? Too bad. You can't. They already have your money. This weird system that you might not want to support or be involved with in any way has your money no matter what. At least, until you move off campus. Of course, that's almost impossible until junior year, unless you're willing to slog through all of the red tape of a college bureaucracy, which isn't easy. If you're leaving for a dietary reason, you must have documentation that you talked with a chef from CAS who agrees that your dietary needs could not be met by on-campus services. Which is kind of like saying the only way you can get out of a fist fight is if the person who is punching you in the face agrees that you shouldn't be punched in the face anymore.
The removal of a required meal plan and on-campus dining service wouldn't just be good for students, however. It would also be a boom for the local economy. Imagine all of the new restaurants that would be allowed to flourish if a whole college full of potential consumers were suddenly freed from the constraint of meal plans. And food quality would increase as well.
Presently the options for off-campus eating in Geneseo are a bit rough, to put it nicely. Sure, some standouts like Euro Cafe and Sweet Arts exist, but most of the options will leave you so full of regret you want to die. This happens because there's no competition. Main Moon doesn't have to be good, it just has to be better than whatever Letchworth is serving that day.
The next time you lament the quality of campus food don't just consider taste. Campus food is bad, not just because it isn't very good food, it's bad because it hurts everyone.
