By: Katrina Bown
SUNY Brockport students are hungry for a change in their dining options. Since the beginning of the fall semester, the college has reduced the number of dining halls from two to one.
This year Brockway Dining Hall at SUNY Brockport has been shut down for COVID-19 testing for the rest of the year. All students on campus are mandated to eat at Harrison if they want to use their meal plan.
Lately Harrison has short staff. With that, it comes with a handful of issues.
At SUNY Brockport sophomore Keilyn Matos, has worked at Harrison Dining Hall for a year now.
Matos says, “I know Harrison is low on staff due to COVID-19, so it took out a lot of the staff members. This makes it difficult to cook, serve the food, work the grill, clean and do dishes. It’s honestly hard to work since we are short staffed. For me they will usually give me more tasks to do.”
Matos continues, “while doing things such as dishes or food we would get around three people to do the task with. But with the low staff we will get around two people to complete the task. With this, lines get backed up and we fall behind.”
The team at Harrison has had to find ways to improvise to help solve their issues. When the dining hall is behind on washing dishes, the dining hall will use paper plates and plastic utensils since there are not enough people to constantly do the dishes.
Brockport students last year were given to-go boxes for their food from the dining halls. After a while they grew accustomed to how easy the to-go boxes made it for students who are always on the go and had to rush to their next class. However, this year they did not include the to-go boxes and the students are hopeful for the return of them.
Sophmore Oscar Chacon says,
“With my busy schedule I want to find time where I can actually get a meal during the week. However it’s hard to even get lunch and dinner between classes and soccer. I just wish that the to-go boxes from last year were back. Since I bet everyone no longer has online classes, they don’t have time to get food in between classes.”
Sophmore Taylor Bessey was passionate about some more of the issues she has dealt with at Harrison.
Bessey says, “Growing up I was diagnosed with Hashimoto disease, in which my immune system attacks my thyroid. However one of the biggest issues with this is that i’m not able to eat gluten at all. And because of this I’m on a strict diet. At the dining hall in the beginning of the year they barely had any option for people with a gluten intolerance.”
Bessey continues, “Now they have a small line of options during dinner time, However during breakfast and lunch i’m not always so lucky. For my gluten free bagels, I have to ask separately for them. which some of the time they will not even have them in stock.”
Students are recognizing the issue in the dining hall, and are understanding that a change needs to be made.
Luckily SUNY Brockport is looking to open up Brockway Dining Hall by next year. With the pandemic dying down, the short staff issue will be resolved by the upcoming year. For the other issues, students can give feedback to BASC here, to voice any of their concerns.
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