Opinions

Our View: Dining halls need more than facility renovation

With Associated Students Inc. elections coming up, students are feeling more democratic than ever. Gee, wouldn’t it be nice if we had more of a voice in other areas on campus? Say, for instance, in our campus housing conditions?

The dining halls in the residential colleges are on the road toward renovation. The plan is to make the dining halls more inclusive and more open to the general population of residents. The renovations could help to make the food more accessible.

As for the food itself? No announcements have been made regarding the dining hall meals. The $6 million project is geared toward gutting and restructuring the dining halls. The food quality, on the other hand, doesn’t seem due for a change.

This discrepancy is illogical at best, seeing as residents are most likely not visiting the dining halls to eat their meals in pleasant surroundings. Rather, they visit the halls to satisfy the day-old hunger built up in class.

Campus residents are required to purchase a meal plan in order to live in the dorms, which means they’ve essentially paid for the food long before it is ever served to them. So, even if students living on campus want a nice place to eat, they also want quality food worth the cost of living in the dorms.

The Parkside College dining hall will be renovated this summer, and the Hillside College dining hall is expected to be renovated in the not-too-distant future. The changes made will enable consumers to actually see their food being prepared.

Therefore, with this change, students will be privy to the preparation process for powdered eggs every morning. This probably won’t help the residents’ already small appetite for “dorm food.”

In any case, at least the renovations could potentially reduce the traffic flow in the dining halls. Organization is sorely needed between all the new serving stations, especially because students tend to rush when packing meals to-go.

Beginning with renaming the formerly known Residence Halls and Residence Learning College to Hillside College and Beachside College, respectively, Cal State Long Beach has worked to increase the residents’ sense of pride in their housing.

The renovations to the dining halls are just part of the further development of the housing colleges. It would be a smoother transition, however, if each improvement could be made in tandem with the others.

If the quality of the dining hall food could improve at the same time as the dining halls themselves, students would be less likely to notice the shortcomings then. Alas, no system is perfect, but small steps toward progress are better than no progress at all.
 

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