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dailynebraskan.com
monday, september 30, 2013 volume 113, issue 026
Inside Coverage
Road show
Wish upon a star
Volleyball, soccer Students’ Disney teams win internships offer games in Illinois experience, friends
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Softball opens fall with three victories
Nebraska sophomore infielder Hailey Decker slides home past Nebraska-Omaha catcher Ditto Campbell in the Huskers’ 9-0 victory against the Mavericks in the Big Red Classic on Sunday at Bowlin Stadium.
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foodfight Students, dining employees spar over taste, nutrition of food at UNL
story by Natasha Rausch | photos by Spencer Myrlie
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t’s 12:45 p.m., chemistry’s over for the day and freshman Luke Monhollon’s stomach is growling. Strapped for time, he hurries out of Hamilton Hall and heads to the Lewis Training Table for lunch. He walks to the sandwich bar and asks for the ingredients that remind him most of home: a ninegrain whole-wheat bun, slices of roast beef, freshly cut pepperjack cheese and a squirt of mustard. On the side is a large salad of mixed greens, cheese and shredded carrots with balsamic vinaigrette. He grabs a bowl of cantaloupe before sitting down alongside a host of Nebraska athletes, administration members and fellow students. When looking for a bite to eat, University of Nebraska-Lincoln students like Monhollon have plenty of options on City Campus: CPN Dining Services, Selleck Dining Services, Abel/Sandoz Dining Services and Harper
Dining Center. But some students say they’re left dissatisfied with the nutritional value and quality of the meals there, and they prefer the selection at the East Campus Union Cafe & Grill and the Lewis Training Table, which requires advance reservations for non-athletes. University officials, however, attest there are good – and healthy – meals to be found all over campus. Assistant Director of University Dining Services Pam Edwards said all the dining halls order their food from the same local vendors. The difference, she said, lies in how the individual menus are put together. “Each of the dining halls develops their own menus,” Edwards said. “You’re not going to find the same thing at all four City Campus dining halls on the same day. They all order from the same vendors. They all select their recipes from the same foods. They just
have different menu arrangements.” Although Edwards oversees the City and East Campus dining, she said the training table, which is provided specifically for UNL athletes, is a separate entity from the university dining halls altogether. In order for students who do not participate in university athletics to dine at the training table, on the west side of Memorial Stadium, they must make reservations for specific days. Dinnertime is excluded from this offer. For Monhollon, the training table is the best place to get sandwiches because it’s “actual meat.” “If you look at processed meats, like Jimmy John’s or Subway, they just look like uniform pieces,” said Monhollon, a biological systems engineering major. “If you look at the meats at the training table, you may as well be sitting there with a knife cutting it. It looks
food fight: see page 2
Students crave earlier, later dining hall hours Colleen Fell DN After arriving at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln this fall, Adam D’Josey didn’t expect to be paying for 20 more meals a week than he could eat. Like some other students, the freshman exploratory major is feeling the sting of what he calls “UNL’s inconvenient dining hall hours.” No dining hall on campus is open past 8:30 p.m. on weekdays. During the week, D’Josey has class – with few gaps – from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m., making it difficult for him to access dining centers during normal hours. “It does a really good job of not being open when I need it to be,” the freshman said of dining halls campus-wide. Dining hall hours vary depending on the day, but the earliest that any UNL dining hall opens on weekdays is 6:45 a.m., and on weekends, the first dining hall doesn’t open until 10:30 a.m. For dinner, a student is hardpressed to find an option after 8 p.m. aside from Selleck Dining Services, open until 8:30 p.m. Monday through Thursday. But administrative officials within
University Housing and Dining Services said the current dining hall hours are fit for the needs of students. Meanwhile, with marketplace and self-serve dining options cropping up on campuses nationwide, other universities are starting to change their hours to accommodate students’ latenight schedules. Texas Christian University in Fort Worth, Texas, currently offers a late-night option for students who have later classes. Monday through Thursday, TCU’s Market Square Dining Center closes at 9 p.m., then reopens at 10 p.m. and stays open until midnight. A dining hall at the University of Minnesota: Twin Cities, similarly, remains open from 7 p.m. to midnight Sunday through Thursday. UNL, which has more than double TCU’s enrollment of 9,925 students at 24,207 students, could benefit from adopting late-night options like these, students say. Brennan Connelly, a sophomore athletic training major, said he wishes UNL dining halls stayed open at least until all his classes ended. “I have class until 9:30 (p.m.),” Connelly said. “So it would be nice if I could get dinner after that.”
In the past, students have complained about the availability of dining halls on weekends and their delaying the starts to their days. But D’Josey, who is a resident of Smith Hall, wishes the Harper Dining Center were open on Sunday evenings. Students who live in Harper, Schramm and Smith can access the Harper Dining Center via an underground tunnel. D’Josey said he does not expect to be able to rely on the more-distant dining halls when it gets to be colder outside, as he would have to walk across campus to either the Selleck or Abel/ Sandoz dining centers. “I don’t see myself trying to brave the cold to get a piece of ‘just OK’ pizza,” D’Josey said. Fielding food-related complaints from students is a common occurrence for universities, but UNL’s reliance on local food sources and organic food programs has, in large part, kept student complaints at bay. UNL has a number of different food suppliers, including both local farms and processing plants such as Cash-Wa Distributing of Kearney/Lincoln for various food items, Hiland Dairy Foods
hours: see page 2
MEAL PLANS AROUND THE U.S. Cornell University – Ithaca, N.Y. An on-staff registered dietician and nutritionist is always available to help Cornell University students make healthy choices at the dining hall. The school features 30 on-campus dining locations and 10 all-you-caneat dining rooms, where students can be found indulging in poached salmon, masala tomato soup and spinach lasagna prepared by world-class chefs. The school’s cooks have worked at restaurants, five-star hotels and even Grand Slam tennis tournaments.
Northwestern University – Evanston, Ill.
University of California, Berkeley – Berkeley, Calif.
Continuous dining is available from breakfast through dinner at three dining halls in Evanston. Northwestern University’s dining halls feature allyou-can-eat buffets with vegan and vegetarian options such as edamame nut salad. Every meal includes a choice of fresh fruit and beverages, along with salad and deli bars. The university offers late-night meals Monday through Thursday, when one dining hall keeps its doors open until 11:30 p.m.
Bowdoin College – Brunswick, Maine
University of Washington – Seattle
Berkeley operates on a meal points system at 16 facilities, including seven restaurants and four retail markets. Each of its four dining halls offers an expansive menu: On an ordinary Sunday night, a student could choose to dine on margherita pizza, garlic roasted red potatoes, chicken tikka, vegan chocolate mousse pie, carrot cake or hummus and pita bread. Late-night dining includes a quesadilla bar, mac and cheese, burgers, pizza, breakfast food, shrimp skewers and fresh fruit.
Bowdoin College’s largest dining hall features soaring ceilings and ultramodern lighting. Students eating at Thorne Hall sit at wooden tables looking out at the tall pines towering over the school’s campus. Meals regularly include vegetarian and vegan friendly options such as Mandarin Noodles and Grilled Spinach and Mozzarella on Sourdough. The university offers a Super Snack meal option on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays, where students can eat from 10 p.m. to 1 a.m.
Students have 40 choices for on-campus dining, from taco trucks to Subway to Pan-Asian cuisine. The dining plan works like a pre-paid debit card, so students can select a “level” with an allotted budget for food each week. The dollars can also go toward purchases at various cafes and convenience markets, so a dining plan can purchase a bag of Skittles as well as a banh mi sandwich.
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Ohio State University – Columbus, Ohio Meal plans are flexible at Ohio State, where students can opt for a set number of “blocks” to buy food at on-campus locations, unlimited or limited dine-in access at traditional dining halls or a combination of the three. The campus offers more than 25 places to eat, including a diner, coffee shops, a burrito restaurant and innumerable pizza joints.