A student, Sophia Denton, asked on MyRaft, “Food recommendations that aren’t dining hall poison?”
On the campus-wide forum MyRaft, students dependent on meal plans have begun to notice a lack of food diversity.
A meal plan is required for all first year students and those living in Residence Hall. Ranging from $400 to $2279 per year, these plans are found on the Otter Kitchens website and along with housing information.
The food options available to be purchased with meal plans are:
Dining Commons: The Eatery
Otter Student Union: Starbucks, The Sea Store Market, Burger 831, and Bok Choy
Otter Express
You can find more information about the options and hours of operation on the Otter Kitchens website.
If you walk around campus, you might notice, the majority of food seen in students’ arms are covered in Starbucks packaging.
Chartwells is the third-party subcontracted catering service, a corporate business that serves food to more than 300 campuses around the country. This company employs student workers and prepares much of the food sold in dining halls. They are the most obvious face of the food services at CSUMB.
When we reached out to the staff of Chartwells, local manager Tyler Adams, Adams delegated an interview to his Marketing Director, Alexandra Perez. Perez later declined the opportunity to be interviewed after being made aware of these students' comments our staff had collected from MyRaft.
Some of the comments made online refer to food related illnesses and allergies. Chartwells released a statement about the issues, in March 2022.
To highlight how deep the miscommunication goes for our campus food issue, Perez said, in an email, Chartwells “would like to support in future interviews in the future [sic] - perhaps around services during the pandemic, highlighting the team that has worked so hard to ensure our campus community has been taken care of during these difficult times, etc.”
Student Cordell Schneider works for Chartwells. Schneider told You Otter Know about how angry it made him to see the words “stop feeding us slop” chalked on the sidewalks near the Tanimura & Antle Family Memorial Library, earlier this semester. He wants his fellow students to acknowledge the lack of resources available to the kitchen staff and chefs.
Nick Alesandro, a Biology Major and interchangeable Chartwells employee, overheard Schneider speaking with us in the Otter Student Union, and agreed to share his opinion on the negative effects of student judgment about the food.
Alesandro and Schneider both agree they noticed the crews are too small, and the budget is too tight, to properly serve the students for all meals around the clock.
Before the campus shutdown for the pandemic, Cordell said the campus was home to Monte’s Dining Hall. He said they would serve beer and pub food, and now the Otter Express is moving to fill that need.
While changes are being planned, this semester students have obviously struggled to feed themselves three full meals a day.
CLC Writing Tutor and student, Michaela O’donnell, shared her situation with her roommate. Michaela goes grocery shopping every week, because she wants more than what is being offered. She notes how it’s helpful that she has a job and her parents cover her housing costs.
“What happens to students who can’t afford to go grocery shopping?” asked O’donnell. She also shared that she learned, from a neighbor, that the vegan/veggie options on campus were cooked in the same oil as everything else. We hoped to confirm this info with Perez.
For most of the semester, Michaela bought her roommate, Pepper Nuñez Bradshaw, campus food on her account because Nuñez Brawshaw was not able to use the meal plan credits. According to her roommate, Pepper had paid for the “cheapest meal plan available” as part of their housing agreement, but could not figure out how to use the credits. The issue was never named, and it was resolved but never communicated.
O’donnell is still wondering what the problem was and how it was fixed. Their whole situation begs the question: Should students go to Chartwells to answer these questions, or is this an issue for another department?
Michaela said “Housing would be my first thought [to reach out to], to send them an email.”
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