Danette Heredia | Staff Writer
SGA brought to attention the struggles that BBC students face when it comes to a lack of food options on campus through S.R. 007 ‘Food at BBC’, personally inviting BBC’s dining service committee to discuss the expansion of dining options on campus.
With students concerned about the lack of healthy choices and food availability, SGA is attempting to meet BBC’s dining service committee to make better attempts in providing diverse and health-conscious options.
“…Access to dining for student dining should be a higher priority for FIU than profitability…food options at BBC should be expanded to best meet diverse needs of the students that study there,” reads S.R. 007.
BBC currently has five restaurants open no later than 4 PM: Roary’s Bay Cafe, Vicky Cafe, Acai U Later, Starbucks, and Chick-Fil-A.
That is cumulatively 48 hours of food service per week at BBC, but are lacking compared to MMC’s 102 hours of food service available weekly – more than double BBC’s.
According to a study conducted by S.R. 007’s sponsors, nearly 20% of the 99 students that participated in the survey identified with a dietary restriction while leaving comments on how difficult it is to manage a dietary restriction on BBC campus.
“I spent long hours on campus and I’m sick of having to set aside 30 to 60 minutes to go grab some food just because I’m vegan, even the Beyond Burger is gone. Sometimes I come to campus, I could cry from how unfair it is,” noted the bill from a comment left on their survey.
Although it has been seen that BBC dining service committee is responsive to student feedback from a previous concern on allergen awareness during a town hall meeting, the main setback would be how they would be able to receive this feedback from students visiting BBC everyday.
“Both Mango and PG5, they have this nice on their looping TV’s: …’Hey you have feedback? Let us know.’ …Those don’t exist at BBC,…they have no way of collecting feedback…You would have to be at an MMC location to provide feedback about BBC so that’s a little counterintuitive,” said Senator Dale Brochinsky.
Attempts to reach out to the committee have been unsuccessful.
The bill discussed an alleged lack of transparency when it comes to updating menus and communicating what is going to be served that day within Roary’s Bay Cafe, defining these as short-term achievements that can easily be fixed if brought to the attention of the dining committee.
Despite concerns about the profitability behind investing in these concerns, SGA is anticipating that committing to fixing overall dining at BBC would be the first step in gathering more foot traffic at BBC.
Because of BBC’s dining reputation, many students would plan accordingly to eat outside campus, taking away foot traffic from any other dining location on campus.
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