OUR VIEW: While some parts of the new cafeteria have improved, as a whole it has not.

The quality of the cafeteria has declined since last year, and we believe this needs to change. There are days where they don’t have cups or forks, and there are days when there is no milk for cereal. The sales are up from last year overall, but the sales percentage for Mesquite Dining stayed at 53 percent. 

Sometimes when students walk into the cafeteria, they will get their food, and then try to get a drink, but find that there are no cups left. Other times, students will go to get a fork to eat with, but find that there are no forks. Another problem students have run into is the dish belt being off during cafeteria times, which leads to a back up of dirty dishes. That doesn’t make our cafeteria look great.

Kristi Schulte, director of housing and residence life, said this is because there will sometimes be more students in the cafeteria than usual, making it hard for staff to manage the stock of utensils. She also said a way to fix this is by politely asking a staff member if he could find some cups or forks. 

This belief of poor cafeteria quality seems to be popular among other students as well. We ran a Twitter poll asking students what they thought of the quality of the cafeteria. Of the 31 responses, 39 percent said poor, 32 percent said okay, 23 percent said good, and only 6 percent said great. Our solution is to have more people on staff to help manage the stock. That way everyone can stay focused on the jobs they do, and the cafeteria remains stocked.

Overall, the quality of the cafeteria is low this year. Staff struggles with stock, and the cafeteria looks dirty with unclean tables and a belt that’s never on. If these things don’t change, lower sales could result.