“The meal plan options here are way too expensive.”

“Late night McEwen should be open every night, not just weekends.”

“Wait, there’s no more killer cookies?”

These are just a few comments about Elon University’s on-campus dining options that can be frequently overheard from Colonnades to Harden and McEwen to Moseley. Many students openly voice their dissatisfaction with Elon’s daily meal options. And yet, considering the variety of amenities afforded to Elon students, the common sense of entitlement is in serious need of a reality check.

While we at Elon continuously live in the lap of relative luxury, there are many people in the surrounding community that have never been exposed to the kind of amenities that we are so quick to criticize.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, almost 2 out of every 10 citizens who live in Alamance County live below the national poverty line, an increase of .08 percent from the overall state average. In 2011, the average Alamance County’s worker earned roughly $641 per week, compared to the statewide wage average of $768 per week. Only 21.4 percent have earned a bachelor’s degree or higher. Many struggle to provide adequate meals for their families every day, as the number of residents receiving assistance through food and nutrition stamp programs has increased approximately 17.2 percent in the last two years, totaling 23,148 people.

With these sobering statistics in mind, we cannot help but notice that the “lack-of-killer-cookie” induced criticisms that frequently come from Elon students are somewhat trivial in comparison to the more pressing issues that plague our surrounding community.

In last week’s edition of The Pendulum, you were able to read about the closing of Harden Dining Hall this coming fall and the possibility of 1889 Grill Room closing to allow additional room for Colonnades dining hall.

This latest proposal evoked a veritable mix of student reactions, with some calling for 1889 to remain open because of its higher standard of food options in comparison to other Elon dining halls.

Others, like junior Marshall Holmes, believe the potential closing of 1889 is being somewhat over-dramatized, and the proposal might yield future benefits for Elon students in terms of their meal options.

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“To be honest, I have not eaten at 1889 in a while,” Holmes said in a recent interview. “It’s a nice place to take your parents if they visit: However, there are perfectly nice restaurants that can be easily walked to, like Town Table or Simply Thai. Furthermore, from ARAMARK’s perspective, running 1889 is expensive, so if they were to close it and make meal plans cheaper, it would actually be a good thing to do. In this case, it almost makes sense to close it.”

And while the student body itself may be divided in its opinion, or lack thereof, of the job that Elon Dining Services does in providing for students, it is also important to take a step back and examine the many on-campus amenities provided to us. We all may have our personal qualms about the food options available at Elon, but we seem to be overly quick to criticize their efforts without analyzing the environment in which we live. Elon’s dining halls, while by no means perfect, do a much better job than the student body gives them credit for.

Without going into an in-depth culinary critique of each Elon dining hall, it is imperative that we first recognize Elon Dining services for what it is meant to be: an on-campus meal service, charged with the task of providing meals to students and faculty every day. And while most students will never actually witness it, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that cooking for the hundreds of students who frequent each dining hall and retail location every day is a sizeable challenge.

In accordance with the reality that our dining outlets are essentially cafeterias for college students, we shouldn’t realistically expect their efforts to always stack up to a home-cooked meal or something you could order at a five-star restaurant off campus. Elon students tend to be largely unfair in criticizing their performance based on this comparison.

[quote]We all may have our personal qualms about the food options available at Elon, but we seem to be overly quick to criticize their efforts without analyzing the environment in which we live. Elon’s dining halls, while by no means perfect, do a much better job than the student body gives them credit for.[/quote]

But if you are still interested in making comparisons, let’s also recognize how Elon’s dining services holds up in comparison to other universities in terms of overall quality and service. According to collegeprowler.com, Elon earns an "A-" for its on-campus dining amenities. In comparison with other prominent universities within North Carolina, Elon ranks higher than average on this scale. Both Duke University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill earned a “B+” in this category, while University of North Carolina at Greensboro only earned a “B” and Wake Forest University scraped by with a “C.” So the next time you are thinking of complaining about Elon’s food options, consider the grievances you might have if you were at one of these schools.

It is also vital that we take the time to acknowledge the variety and number of campus dining resources available to us. Elon offers 14 different places for students to eat on campus. And while students may limit their patronage of all these options to those that cater to their personal tastes, Elon Dining Services provide a valuable tool to help make finding a preferred meal even easier. Each establishment posts its online menu, available to all students, on the Elon University Dining Services website.

This resource is designed to ensure that students have the best meal experience possible. And while it might be a hassle to have to pull up a web page, with the amount of time we all spend glued to our smart-phones and computers, most students should be willing to spare a few minutes away from Facebook to take a look.

We who represent the Elon community cannot claim ignorance of, nor apathy toward, the constant stream of opportunities that flows our way. We are consistently provided ample access to food, comfortable housing and a chance to better ourselves through hands-on academic learning, each of which are luxuries that many in the surrounding community cannot claim for themselves. But that does not entitle us to complacency, either. Frankly, it doesn’t entitle us to anything.

Part of The Elon Commitment is to actively engage and understand the community which we chose to become part of. We should seek to give back to those less fortunate than us. In this case, many Elon students already strive to address the needs of the surrounding community through involvement in the Campus Kitchen Project. Campus Kitchen partners with area high schools, colleges and universities to share on-campus kitchen space, recover leftover food from campus dining halls and enroll student volunteers to prepare and deliver meals to the community every day. Elon, as a whole, is a civically minded community, and our actions must reflect this characteristic with which we are so content to identify.

Though there remains room for improvement in certain elements of our dining experience, Elon students enjoy a considerably better experience than we often recognize. But we tend to focus more on the negative aspects, even though there are plenty of positive ones as well. Carving stations, freshly cooked pasta, late night scrambled eggs and burgers continuously satisfy our hunger pangs, leaving our stomachs full and satisfied. But before we jump straight to another bout of college cafeteria criticism, let us remember all the resources that we have at our disposal, rather than only complain about what we don’t have.