Hungryman

Its annoying that students living in the honors college need to walk further to get to a dining hall. Yes. But I suppose I need to give credit where it is deserved. UMass was ranked by the Princeton Review to be the second best college campus for food in the nation.

The dining halls offer great quality, as well as great options. At Hamp for instance, there is the Asian section, the vegetarian section, the gluten free section, the pizza area, the sushi bar, the grill, stir-fry, and the main meal line.  There is also always dessert at each dining hall, and frozen yogurt and/or ice cream.

 A friend at Elon University complained on facebook that they only had grilled cheese, tomato soup, potatoes, and carrots available for diner. There was also chicken but she was “afraid to eat it.”

The quality of food and the number of options UMass offers makes the mile round trip almost worth it.

It’s also nice to know that if I do walk the distance to a dining hall, a great deal of the food is locally grown. This is in part because UMass listens to what the students want. We asked for more locally grown food, and they listened.

In the honors college area we have

Sycamore to Hamp; 0.41 miles

Sycamore to Berk: 0.51 miles

Sycamore to Frank: 0.50 miles

Sycamore to Worcester: 0.56 miles

 Northeast

Mary Lyon House to Worcester: 0.04 miles

 Orchard Hill

Webster House to Frank: 0.24 miles

 Southwest

JQA to Berk: 0.03 miles

JQA to Hamp: 0.15 miles

 Anyone see anything wrong with these numbers? Well clearly it’s that people in JQA have to walk five times as far to eat at Hamp, the healthier dining hall, instead of Berk. Oh. And there’s also the fact that Sycamorians need to walk at least twice as far as anyone else to get to a dining hall, and besides Orchard Hill, at least ten times as far.

Walking from Sycamore to Worcester

Walking from Mary Lyon to Worcester

Sycamore is nearly equidistant to all of the four dining halls on campus. Sure, we have variety because of this (“well… lets flip a couple coins to see where we eat today, won’t change how far we have to walk” kind of logic), but it also means spending money for some meals because, unless I’m the only one, people are lazy. We want a meal, not a workout. Instead of walking a mile for food, we think “let’s go burn some money/dining dollars at Roots while on the unlimited meal plan.”

 Sycamore to Roots: 0.04 miles

It’s nine o’clock in the honors college and I’m getting hungry. But it’s 20 below and the snows piled high, and I’d rather not walk to a dining hall this late at night (screw walking nearly a mile to get there and back). So I consider going to Roots for the fourth time this week. After debating whether I want to spend my dining dollars, I walk down there. And then I see this.

Hm… Now how did that happen? Thought I might be able to rely on the one food source that’s anywhere nearby, but clearly I was wrong. Roots isn’t even reliable enough to have pizza consistently, when dining halls have so much they put friggin cranberries on top. Yes, there is (and was, hah walked out with a pulled pork quesadilla) other food at Roots, but pizza is generally accepted as the cheap choice for a quick meal.

 To make matters worse, even if the pizza is there, the price was bumped up. It used to be $4.75 (which would allow YCMP to get two for one swipe) but then after winter break, they increased the price by fifty cents. Did the pizza taste fifty cents better?

Have dining dollars? Cool, you get to eat.

No? Sucks to be you, go walk to a dining hall.

 This is the thought process of most students in the honors college. Why do we need dining dollars to eat? Because as cool as Roots is, it just isn’t a dining hall and doesn’t allow people to use meal swipes (other than YCMP). They do have grab and go, which accepts swipes, but that’s only for breakfast, and ends at 10. On weekdays. So on weekends there isn’t even breakfast if you don’t have/want to spend money.

People on the unlimited plan (a large portion of freshmen) and people trying to save money on the value plan don’t have much of a reliable food source in the honors college area. Sure, you can get a filling meal at roots, but how long will your dining dollars last? Will you make it to the end of the semester?

 Roots is expensive and not necessarily the healthiest option. Quesadillas and pizzas sure sound nice, but they can be quite expensive. A small cheese pizza is $5.25, and if you want toppings of any sort, expect to add $1.50. Dining halls provide much more variety to support a healthy diet.