St. Thomas University Students’ Union has passed a motion to create an ad-hoc food services committee, mandated to explore current food services on campus and look at potential alternatives.
Vice-president education Sam Titus said at the Jan. 26 meeting the idea for the committee arose out of the general dissatisfaction from students regarding the cafeteria and limited on-campus food options.
“What we’re looking to do is strike a committee looking at food services on campus … we’re just trying to make sure that we are well-organized with making sure we’re getting voices and making sure that students are heard,” Titus said.
He said the committee will also work closely with the academic and university affairs committee.
Linnea Newman, house representative for Vanier Hall, volunteered to chair the committee. She felt strongly about the issue following a series of failed scheduled attempts to meet with a service director from Aramark, the operator of STU’s food services.
Titus said the point of this committee is not to be pointing fingers at the cafeteria, but rather act as a research committee and help STU’s administration understand where the student frustration is coming from.
This committee will be separate from other bodies related to food troubles such as house committees’ sports and nutrition representatives who are tasked with relaying student concerns to the cafeteria staff.
“Our vision of this committee is not to be yelling at the cafeteria … this really is like a researching committee,” Titus said.
“Especially if we ever wanted anything to actually be done about this, quite frankly, the student union does have quite a bit of leverage when it comes to these kinds of things.”
Titus said if something is to be done, the ad-hoc food services committee is a good place to start.
Brianna Matchett, vice-president student life, said the committee is also good as efforts between the different groups that are working on this issue can be co-ordinated.
“Then if we wanted to look at maybe offering a different food model, then this would be the group that would do the research about what other universities are doing, what Aramark’s services are like here compared to at Memorial or [St. Mary’s] or that kind of thing, but I think that’s the purpose, not to just gather more complaints.”
