During the Covid-19 pandemic the quality and variety of food offered to students at the Saint Lawrence Dana Dining Center and the Northstar Cafe changed significantly. Students were forced to accommodate many of the changes made to the dining centers by the university’s administration to keep students safe while on campus during the pandemic. 

Last year students were not even allowed to serve themselves. They were forced to wait in line with a cardboard “to-go box” and wait to be served by a dining hall staff member. Samanatha Nolan, a sophomore, mentions that her biggest issue with the dining hall during her freshman year was her inability to serve herself.  “Not being able to serve yourself was kind of weird…they put my food on top of each other which was kind of annoying, and you could not control it or say anything about it,” said Nolan.  

In addition to not being allowed to serve herself Nolan also highlights her discontent with the food choices during her first semester on campus in the fall of 2020. “I don’t think they had pizza, which was just an easy option for the first semester at all…it just seemed more standard and not expansive,” said Nolan.  During the first semester of campus the options provided in the dining hall were very limiting. This year students have the option of going down a buffet style line and choosing from a larger variety of food, for each meal. In addition, there are many other side courses to choose from this year that were not available last year such as: pizza, burgers, and the sandwich deli.  

During the pandemic the university’s administration eliminated all reusable plates and silverware in all of its dining halls on campus.. Nolan says, “I will bring my own silverware most of the time because I think it is wasteful and unnecessary.” Ben Sunshine, a sophomore, also highlighted the lack of reusable silverware and plates at Dana as being one of his primary concerns. “In terms of food were there was not anything reusable, which was not great for sustainability purposes,” Said Sunshine.  

Kendy Francois has been working at Dana Dining Center for more than two years now. Kendy mentions that the overall environment of the dinning center itself fundamentally changed from years previous when the pandemic hit, “there were less students when covid was going on, they were allowed to sit inside all the time before covid, but after covid they had to sit outside sometimes.” During the pandemic, in addition to being served less than subpar food, students were also forced to eat outside under a tent, in order to reduce the spread.  

Forcing students to eat outside just motivated more students to take their meals back to their rooms, and not engage with each other in the dining hall. In some scenarios the dining hall could be referred to as a ghost town. When Francois was asked about the environment of the dining center during the pandemic he said that it was, “very quiet, there were not a lot of students,” Francois went on to highlight the rest of his discontent with the dining center.  

Sean Pearson, a food service generalist at the Northstar Cafe highlights the ways in which food was served during the pandemic, and how it is very different than how it used to be served. The pub has not used real plates to serve food since the start of the pandemic, “before we used to not have to put everything in to-go boxes we used to have them on plates,” exclaimed Pearson.  

The university has taken significant steps this fall to make sure that students will receive a wide variety of food this year while on campus. However, there is more that the university can do to return its dining services back to normal.