Student Speaks Out Against Ross Commons New Dining Experience Prompts Frustration, Anger Among Some Students

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"Middlebury prides itself on the quality of the food it serves … The food service staff stay abreast of current culinary trends, and as a result, students enjoy healthy, delicious fare such as grilled meats, freshly tossed pastas, and a constant, varied supply of vegetarian and vegan dishes. The College received the 1999 Ivy Award for best college dining services…" (Middlebury Web site, 2002).
What had been mediocre,has now become atrocious. What had been forgivable is now a disgrace. Middlebury food has taken a turn for the worst.
Plagued in past years by soggy pasta, undercooked eggs and Vegalene-soaked … well, everything, the students of Middlebury took it in stride and allowed the cuisine to carry on, enjoyed a meal with our friends and a very amiable dining staff.
This year, however, hopeful youths prepared for dining splendor with the hype that had been buzzing around campus about Ross Dining Hall, and the closing of Proctor on weekends — changes mean improvement, right? Wrong.
Let's look at our two main dining halls, Ross and Proctor, one at a time.
Ross Dining Hall is beautiful, and we cannot lie about that. Aesthetically, it's a pleasing place to sit. But where is the "constant, varied supply of vegetarian and vegan dishes"? I see many beautiful plates and bowls, and contemporary utensils.
But why are there still sickly looking potatoes sitting under heat lamps? And most of all: What happened to our salad bar?
"I feel like we've really lost a large part of the dining experience when they destroyed our salad bar. Proctor could at least pride itself on being reasonably stacked in that department — but Ross … It's painful," says one disgruntled student.
The set up of each dining line looks great, but in turn ends up being unbelievably confusing.
The beverage machine runs out of ice on a regular basis, and cereal isn't available all day. For being a dining hall that we students waited and waited for, one would expect that it would be able to accommodate an evening's attendance.
We are mistaken again, however, as we see 20 minute lines of students waiting outside the hall to get to their "healthy, delicious fare." Says sophomore Cortney Fritz, "I feel like I have to go to all 3 dining halls to get a complete meal."
Overall? Good pizza, sure beats Neil and Otto's. Terrible salad bar, same tasteless food as last year. General feeling: Ross is a big letdown.
But we are a strong and rebounding body of students and if that was all there was to complain about, we would soon get over it. It does not end there.
Lets move on to Proctor, a dining hall that in past years has offered some hope for Middining with its delicious Saturday and Sunday brunches including waffle bar, scrambled eggs, the coveted crispy cubes and much more.
The bagged lunch program offered a fine sandwich and conversation from Mary, one of the friendliest dining staffers. And when the food in the lines seemed inedible, the students took solace in knowing they could just make a deli sandwich instead.
All of this is gone. We have no weekend brunches, the bagged lunch program was, well, bagged, and there are signs all over Proctor gleefully reminding us: "There is no deli meat during dinner."
Overall on Proctor? We love the panini machine and the staff. We don't love the changes. Proctor has been ravaged.
Lets talk about the new dining schedule, while we're at it.
Has anyone perhaps noticed that Ross Dining Hall serves "Breakfast from 7-9:30 am" and "Brunch from 11-2"? What, may I ask, are we supposed to do between 9:30 and 11 a.m.?
I live on the far side of campus and last Sunday morning a group of friends and I traveled the campus to sample Ross' breakfast, but alas it was 10:30. Our options? Cereal and doughnuts.
So we ate some cereal and sadly waited for 11 o'clock to arrive, and of course by then we weren't even hungry anymore.
There was no waffle bar, and the line of students eager for crispy cubes seemed endless. Don't forget that there were hour changes in Proctor's schedule, too.
No longer can we take comfort in knowing that Proctor will be open until 8 p.m. for dinner each night, because now it shuts at 7:30. (Don't worry about Fridays, its not even open for dinner then.)
I certainly hope that Middlebury takes comfort in knowing that the "freshman 15" will be a little harder to put on (Middlebury students are supposed to be stereotypically beautiful, right?), the students will be eating out of beautiful plates and bowls all year (until they're stolen) and all of us will be burning calories walking all over campus to obtain a complete meal.
The students however, will not accept this without a fight. We want our salad bar, we want breakfast on weekends to exist between 9:30 and 11 a.m. and we want our deli meat.
We want to be able to "enjoy healthy, delicious fare such as grilled meats, freshly tossed pastas, and a constant, varied supply of vegetarian and vegan dishes." I imagine our parents paying the 40 grand a year might agree with that, too.
I wandered around my dorm asking people "Hey, what do you think about Middining this year?" Take it from me, the question sparked many a bitter, passionate response.

Sarah McCabe '05