When I was a freshman, I ate at The Underground almost every single day. This had nothing to do with the food, but everything to do with it being the closest dining location to my dorm. Living in Stever, if I wanted to eat at some point, my options were “The Underground” or walking 20ish minutes to the next closest option.
With The Underground having being closed for the first half of the semester, I’m led to wonder what these poor freshmen living on Morewood are supposed to do. Even Scotty’s Market is still a decent walk from the first years living on Morewood or in Rez on Fifth. What happens if/when it starts to snow? Or when the rain and wind become more regular? Maybe I was just lazy, but if this was the case my freshman year I probably wouldn’t have eaten. I never particularly enjoyed campus food anyways, so why go out of my way to get something that would just make me feel bad after eating?
Additionally, there are not enough gluten-free options on campus. I had been gluten-free since eighth grade, but upon coming to Carnegie Mellon it wasn’t really feasible to maintain that. Luckily, my gluten allergy wasn’t anything severe so I could get away with eating a little gluten, but I know several people who have celiac disease who literally could not eat on campus. I knew that Nourish is the place to go for dietary restrictions, but I didn’t know how to get food from there and they seemed rarely open.
It was also difficult for me to find places on campus that were open. I would look at the hours posted on Carnegie Mellon’s website and then go to the place that I was told would be open, only to discover that it was not in fact open. I don’t know if that was the website’s fault or dining’s fault, but nonetheless the hours on the website were pretty often wrong.
Growing up I heard all about the “freshman fifteen,” how freshmen in college typically gain weight because they don’t lean toward the healthy options. However, I feel like the freshman fifteen affected me because there simply were not healthy options easily available on campus. Again, I don’t know if I just missed something, but it seemed like all my options were sandwiches, cheeseburgers, pasta, fried chicken, or soup. I remember being super jealous of my friends whose schools had a salad bar in their dining hall, when the only salad I could get was prepackaged and covered with enough preservatives to make it last several months.
Now I don’t want to sound completely negative. There are a couple places on campus that I do genuinely enjoy, like The Exchange — I seriously ate there at least once a day, and I still go from time to time. I also felt like all the campus dining workers were very friendly and helpful. And hey, if you enjoy fried chicken, cheeseburgers and pasta for every single meal, then there are certainly some decent options on campus. I was just not used to eating like that every day and missed the healthy food that I had grown up with.
So, needless to say, I did not really enjoy eating on campus as a freshman. When it came time to choose housing for my sophomore year I knew that I needed a kitchen so I could control my meals. I have to say that so far, I don’t miss my meal plan at all.
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