As we all know, the cafeteria has different stations where someone can get comfort food, fried food and healthy food. The rotation from day to day is good enough for the number of students that go here.

Where the meal program is failing is the lack of options for vegetarians and gluten free students. These groups of people have a hard time keeping a healthy diet while being able to eat at a flexible schedule.

Being a vegetarian, I have to be creative if I want to have different options. Some days there will not be any sort of entrée for vegetarians to eat, so I will end up eating veggie burgers for four meals in the week.

For students who lead a busier lifestyle, the bistro is the only meal plan option that works with their schedules. When it comes to the bistro, while I appreciate that there are options for vegetarians that aren’t just salads, there are only two of them. Although I understand that since the number of people at this school who aren’t vegetarian outweigh those who are, it gets boring eating the same thing every week.

The ones who have it even worse are gluten free students. These students often have a health condition where they are severely allergic to gluten. There is only one station in the cafeteria that serves gluten free food. What makes matters worse is that sometimes the “entrée” is not even an entrée. Sometimes this is just mashed potatoes. While I love mashed potatoes as much as the next person, that isn’t a meal. That is a side dish.

If you are gluten free, don’t even think about being busy because there will be no food for you to eat outside of the cafeteria. The bistro has no constant gluten free options, and there is so much cross contamination that it couldn’t be possible.

This is unfair to students who are forced to have meal plans because they have to buy their own food outside of the school because of the lack of option.  This all defeats the purpose of having a meal plan in the first place.