Food Committee

Next Food Committee meeting: Friday (tomorrow) 2:00 in Seminar A

Five major things came out of our meeting from last Friday:

1. The food committee consists of Ami Acheson (Student), Wesley Goodrich (Student), Trint (Aladdin), and Terry (Aladdin).  In order to better define the purpose of the food committee, we created goals for the school year.  They are as follows:
     a. Create an open system of good, productive communication between students and Aladdin Staff.
     b. Address student concerns in a financially conservative and appropriate manner.

2. If you have dietary restrictions, please contact Chad Childs, Ami Acheson, Terry or Trint so that these restrictions can go into food planning.  Examples of dietary restrictions would include but are not limited to: vegans, vegetarians, lactose intolerance, peanut allergies, etc.

3. Please try and clean up after yourself.  If you drop a piece of chicken, pick it up.  Aladdin workers clean up, but they are not your mothers and you are not a toddler.  If you wouldn't leave a mess at your own house, please be respectful to your fellow students and Aladdin staff and try to pick up after yourself.

4. Please bring the bowls, cups, plates, silverware, etc. back to the caf.  Bethel pays for these things, not Aladdin, and at the beginning of the school year, there were enough of each for everyone.  However, some items are starting to get low.  If you have them in your room, bring them to the caf please.  You don't even have to clean them, just bring them back so they can be used by everyone again. 

5. There is a new feedback system for comments.  Good, bad, and indifferent comments can be emailed to foodcommittee@bethelks.edu.  Please include constructive comments or suggestions so that we can serve you better.

Some other items discussed include:

Aladdin expressed concern with what students really want.  If comment cards are anonymous and/or do not include a date, then it is very difficult to give feedback or have discussion about the items addressed on the comment card.

It is against health code to spray for flying insects in the caf.  The best they can do is to hang fly paper and hope the flies go there.  However, if the doors to the outside are held open for long periods of time then flies will come into the building and there isn't anything we can do about it until the weather gets colder and the flies start disappearing.

Aladdin is going to launch a facebook page which should have future menus and suggestion areas.

Please, please, please scan your card every time you enter the caf.  The way your meal plan works is that you pay the school a set amount for a set number of meals every week.  You pay for these meals whether you eat them or not.  Where scanning comes into play is for Aladdin's food costs.  The more students that scan for each meal, the lower the food cost is per person.  This makes it easier for Aladdin to justify spending more money on food for meals.  This will also help to give more options for Evening and Weekend meals.

Thanks,

Ami Acheson

Meeting with President White

President Julia and I met with President White and Dalene this evening.  He asked us to come in order to gain a student perspective and share some information about projects they are working on.

Discussion started with the cafeteria.  We shared the discussion from our Food Committee meeting (the minutes from that will be posted tomorrow on this blog!).  For ongoing improvements, we need ongoing feedback, constructive, both positive and negative.  Please comment both with comment cards and on this blog.

Next President White shared his ideas for campus improvements.  He is working on a schedule for regular maintenance projects for all dorms, starting with Haury.  Please share suggestions with Student Senate.

There was also discussion about service.  Dalene as volunteer numero uno is heading up a Service Corps of retirees in the area to help make campus beautiful.  We on campus will partner with them, especially on Service Day.  We are planning a project to clean up Kidron Canal.  This is a lovely part of our campus that is often ignored and in need of help.  More information about this will come later.

Discussion was enjoyable and productive.  We look forward to more meeting s like this in the future.  If you have things you would like us to share, please let us know!

Cheerleading?

What do you students think about Cheerleaders? Does Bethel need a Cheer squad? The school is seriously considering adding Cheerleading as another option for athletic participation at Bethel College.
Would you, or do you have friends who would be interested in trying out? Do you know of high school students who are looking to make a college decision based on the opportunity of Cheerleading?
Post your thoughts on this subject!

Now what?

Now that the cafeteria challenge is officially over, as of 7:00 pm tonight, we will be moving forward in addressing student concerns with the cafeteria food. Comments will continue to be posted in the last blog post as cabinet members send in their final observations.

NEXT Wednesday (after Fall Fest) October 13th at 7:00 pm we will have a Student Senate meeting where we will discuss student concerns that we feel are high priorities for the year. You can guarantee that the cafeteria will be at the top of this list. If you would like to voice your personal concerns, please feel free to come to this meeting and let us know. If you have personal concerns with the cafeteria still, post comments on the observations we have posted so far. We need feedback (positive and negative) in order to create a change that students want.

- Julia Huxman

Cafeteria Update!

The Cafeteria Challenge is underway, and as promised we have some comments for you from the participants. The instructions were to eat all three meals in the cafeteria and nothing else... as a student should be able (and is expected) to do. If participants find themselves eating extra food once they return home, or purchasing food from Mojo's and other venues, they need to make a note of that, as that is extra money that a student would be paying for food throughout the week.

The goal of this project is to create awareness about the realities of relying on the Cafeteria for nutrition and energy.

Here are some comments from Day 2. 


President White has been posting to the President's blog, the link to that is here:
http://www.bethelks.edu/president/blogs/blog1.php

Day 3:

Breakfast:  I came in for breakfast soon after 8am and made a two-egg omelet with sausage and cheese.  It was very good and things seemed more clean than they have been in the food areas.  I noticed we were out of clean bowls by the omelet bar but found one at the cereal area.  I mentioned this to Aladdin staff and they immediately went to get clean bowls.

Lunch:  For lunch I had a piece of the taco pizza, and made my own burrito (minus the tortilla) at the build-your-own-burrito bar.  Both were very good, and I went back to get two more pieces of taco pizza!  I enjoyed lunch quite a bit today.  Some of the students I was eating with enjoyed the meal, but one student tried several things and was having a hard time finding something she liked.

Dinner:  For supper I had the beef sandwich.  The bread was very large, and I did not eat all of it.  I probably could have asked for the meat without the bread, but I didn’t think about this at first.  On my second bite into my sandwich I bit into something harder than meat.  I’m not sure what it was…a small bone or grissle…and I didn’t look at it as I sneakily covered my mouth with a napkin and tucked it away in there.  I finished most of the sandwich, and it was okay.  I had the cooked vegetables, which were the same mix as what we had on Monday evening.  They were good.  I heard the cake was great, but I don’t really eat a lot of cake and had just had some a couple hours before supper (strange enough!). 

I’m noticing some difference between the lunch meal and the evening meal, in that I’ve been more consistently pleased with lunches.  Maybe it’s the additional option at the show-time station.  This is something I had heard from students…that the evening and weekend meals are not as good as the lunch meals, on average.

It is also important to note that in my conversations with students this week, a theme seems to be developing.  This theme is related to customer service.  Multiple students have given independent reports about times when they felt they were an inconvenience to food service staff.  This seems to occur most frequently at high-traffic times before the end of an hour.  For example, I have heard concerning reports about the food on the line being low at 10-til the hour several times in the morning and again late in the cafeteria’s open hours.  In addition to the food lines not being well-stocked, students express seeing the staff act visibly upset, complaining and asking the students how many are coming, etc.  In the last two days I have received reports of this happening at 10-til 8am and 9am, and Tuesday evening.  The report about Tuesday evening was that a large group of student-athletes came at the same time soon before 7pm.  The students did not feel like the staff was ready for this group and were upset about the group coming in so late.

I have also received concerning reports from food service staff about how students are treating them, and I have been following up with these students. 

Customer service is extremely important in the cafeteria, and was a point of emphasis last year.  I hope that this part of the experience can improve for everyone involved, as the food service company is here to serve the students well…and I hope our community responds favorably and respectfully even when things don’t go as well as hoped.  The students are the focus of the service here, and I hope efforts can be made by Aladdin to help them feel more welcome and not like an inconvenience.  For the relationship between food service staff and the students to improve, I believe customer service will need to be a top priority.