Man cannot live on bagel alone

Four streams of traffic crowd the 3-foot door, but I’m too hungry to care. With my head down, I pushed through. But before I can say “roast beef panini,” I’m sideswiped by a backpack. Recoiling, I bump a hungry girl in Uggs, which is never a good thing. I grab the usual: two bagels, a bag of pretzels, chips and a Coke. Can I just pay and leave already?

Curse you, Ballantine Cafe! There must be a better way to get food on campus.
Meal point-dependent and car-less, I rely on RPS for food. I don’t have much choice. My access to cookware is limited to the fridge in my dorm room and the toaster in my neighbor’s.

And I’m not alone. Each first-year student – about one-fifth of the student body – is required to live on campus.

With our inadequate resources, storing, packing and bringing food along to class isn’t easy.

While our addictive need for Charley Biggs’ and Taco Johns’ can be readily met in the food courts, we can’t find such offerings elsewhere.

What we can find are food “kiosks” – like the one at Ballantine – that offer bags of chips, pastries and sandwiches.

Intended to serve as quick refueling stations, these kiosks are not designed to offer substantial nutrition to students. And this would be fine if students were not reliant upon these locations for full meals.

But the long lines suggest otherwise, as do the armfuls of food.  Students with busy schedules turn to these kiosks for lunch, creating an overwhelming mealtime rush and the occasional food shortage.

We need something different.

Perhaps we should expand these locations.

The demand is there, but not the space. A larger-scale, better-equipped food vendor close to classrooms in the southwest corner of campus would surely be welcomed by the time-strapped student with a full appetite.

I’d personally volunteer to bring a sledge hammer to that ridiculous wall that makes the Ballantine Cafe 20 times too small. And I wouldn’t mind taking out that pair that daily rekindles their friendship in front of the fruit stand as an added bonus.

But maybe we need greater change: a full-scale food court close to the classrooms. At the Union, perhaps?

Once upon a time, meal points were accepted at the Indiana Memorial Union, but those days have passed. Of course, the restaurants will still take my cash, campus access or credit card – but I’d much rather they take my meal points. I sure don’t want them, unless they start having worth beyond Indiana Avenue.

This past year, the IU Student Association focused on 100 percent rollover for student meal points.

Now that I keep them, I want to be able to use them on a daily basis in a meaningful way – not just in a raid of the Little Debbie rack at the C-store.

We need increased food offerings close to the classrooms, for man cannot live by bagel alone. And he surely won’t survive if the Uggs girl wipes out the case before he arrives.