I’ve had a lot of late nights recently, thanks to a rehearsal schedule along with club obligations. By the time I’m out and ready for dinner, all the campus options are closed–and I’m starving.

The other night, I ordered chicken alfredo and breadsticks from Pizza Hut, one of the few businesses still open at 11:00 p.m., just so I could have dinner at all.

I must admit, I really enjoyed cracking open a pizza box knowing that all of it was for me. That said, this is not a sustainable diet, because I don’t have time during the day to eat either.

As a student on a meal plan, I try to keep my meal choices confined to what takes swipes. Of course, this means that I’m often stuck heading to Saxby’s or the Student Center for food, considering their centralized location.

As a full-time student, it’s difficult to budget time to get a filling meal during the day. A sandwich and a drink are not a reasonable meal for anyone, nor is it balanced. And yet, this is often what I’m stuck eating during the day.

This is because the Hollypointe Commons is all the way across campus. The most cost-efficient, filling, and healthy food on campus is the furthest away.

I can use one meal swipe to eat a three-course meal at Hollypointe, complete with up to five unique lines to walk through and various buffet options, or I can get a sandwich and chips or a bowl and a drink from the Student Center. 

Now, it is possible to eat healthier while eating primarily at the Student Center. Freshens, for example, has a wide array of healthier wraps and salads.

However, the argument still stands. A filling meal requires a balance of nutrients, otherwise, I’m going to be going about my day hungry. 

If I’m walking across campus everywhere I need to go during the day, attending classes and doing my work, I’m exerting a lot of both physical and mental energy. I need good food to fuel me and neither the Student Center nor Saxby’s should be my long term go-to.

Once per day isn’t so bad, as long as in the evening I run over to Hollypointe and eat a filling, nutritious meal for dinner, but I can’t. By the time most of my days are over, Hollypointe is closed and I’m hiking over to Pizza Hut or 7-Eleven.

Of course, the Student Center is open late, with a few options accepting meal swipes until 10:30 p.m. to 11 p.m. Among them are Jersey Mike’s and The Sweet Shoppe. If I’m hungry past 9:00 p.m. and want to use a meal swipe, I’m relegated to sandwiches or dessert. 

It’s a lot to ask of the university for them to keep Hollypointe or the Student Center open late for students like me. Yet, the university perpetuates these issues through tactics of waste and distance.

A student cannot use more than one meal swipe in a meal period, forcing us to wait until the next period to get another meal. Because of this policy, I cannot order food ahead. 

Say I know that I have a long night ahead of me, but only one block of time where I can run to the Student Center for a bite to eat. I can’t get a salad and a sandwich to eat for the day, it will always be one or the other.

Then, the distance between one hall to another is something to factor in. In terms of distance from the hubbub, Hollypointe is, of course, the furthest, thanks to its location in the middle of student housing. 

Next is the Student Center, which, while along Mullica Hill Road, is still only close to Discovery Hall. Lastly, there is Saxby’s, which is in the center of it all. It also serves the least food per meal swipe, with some of their offerings amounting to a piece of toast and a small coffee.

This design keeps students like me hungry, wasting our meal swipes on the least amount of food possible, forcing us to use our Rowan Bucks and eventually our regular, hard-earned bucks on food.

I am forced to have a meal plan thanks to my first-year status. I should hope that Rowan would work to optimize the system so I’m not walking around like a hungry zombie, but that is a lot to ask. Instead, I would like to encourage Rowan to make a slight policy adjustment.

Staffing all locations on campus past 9:00 p.m. is simply unrealistic. Maybe in the distant future, the Student Center shops could remain open. In the meantime, I really believe that it’s in a student’s best interest to allow multiple meal swipes in one period.

Even just raising the cap from one to two would allow me to carry around a second meal for later, as opposed to realizing too late that I need to dip into my stash of dorm snacks.

I am trying to live a money-conscious, disciplined life, which involves using the resources provided to me instead of excessively spending money on places like Pizza Hut. The way dining is set up right now actively impedes that goal, forcing me to engage with my finances and food in a wasteful way.

Hopefully in the future, the Rowan dining experience can become more student friendly, because as it stands, it’s a frustrating facet of my time living on campus.

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