When one pays money toward something, it is expected to be done the way the consumer wants it to be… because they paid for it.

Students pay thousands of dollars per year to attend college here, but there seems to be many complaints from students about something that impacts everyone’s well-being: campus dining.

Campus dining is virtually all fast food at an egregious price, with the exception of Larson Commons which is a laughable attempt oat“real” food.

Outside of having a hangover and an intermittent yearning for unhealthy food, the dining services situation could be properly described as a fiasco if one is seeking out a healthy, home style plate of food.

There’s a financial report online on sdstate.edu that was published April 8, 2013 that gives out all the numbers of South Dakota State University for the fiscal year. The end of the year showed there was $277,830,361.85 in net assets- granted that was almost two years ago but still begs the question: what would it take to carve out a few dollars for an improvement on campus dining?

Well, the fat cats who run this institution in their spiffy white collars probably have a lot more to be doing than to take a look at student complaints.

Put everything into consideration with this topic; even though none of the higher ups would really care about what an undergraduate student would have to say about this, but if dining changed, the prices would drastically increase. Think about how high the cost of the low quality food is here— if the quality of food was better, the prices would be even higher than they are right now.

A rational assumption to think that would happen and the irony of it is even better: the white collar “leaders” of this institution essentially taxing the “poor” who have already paid their dues as it is. Perhaps it’s just a waste of energy to bring up the issue at all because it almost seems pointless; the giant always crushes the little guy who has no resources to change the situation.

The entire situation is like David and Goliath, except nobody wants to use the rock and slingshot to address the matter directly. The way the problem has been going thus far, it would take a higher power to have this change occur in true David and Goliath fashion.

To delve deeper into the disaster known as campus dining at SDSU, or as many know it under the mononym of “Aramark,” I went out to students directly.

In a research survey of three people overall, I asked “what do you think of campus dining?” I gave them the choice of five answers: great, good, neutral, bad, and super-duper bad. The research survey resulted in all three participants responding with the answer of “super-duper bad.”

The masses have spoken SDSU; it’s now on you, the people, to begin the revolutionary dining uprising or to simply continue to enjoy the narrative of consuming super-duper bad food. 

Robert Lyons is a sociology major, and can be reached at [email protected]