Student’s Twitter pics expose food service problems

When senior Trent Grizzle walked into the cafeteria about 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, Jan. 18, the last thing he expected to see was an empty food station.   

“I was upset and frustrated because I am student teaching in Crawford,” he said in an email. “Dinner is the only quality/balanced meal that I am able to eat during the day, and it is the only meal that I am able to eat on campus.” 

Grizzle, 22, of Fairbury, said that was not the first time he has had issues with the cafeteria’s food service.  

“Normally when I go to eat dinner in the cafeteria there are always limited options to choose from and or the food does not have much effort put into it (almost as if it is leftovers from lunch earlier that day),” he wrote in his email.  

Wanting the college to address the issue, he tweeted pictures of the empty food stations.

“6 pm on a Tuesday and there is no food to eat. Not one to complain but I spend thousands on a meal plan each year. No salad, no pizza, no soup, no entree. @chadronstate,” his tweet stated.

Grizzle’s post apparently gained serious attention. He said 24,000 Twitter users viewed the tweet and 4,000 users interacted with it.  

One of those was CSC’s Twitter account. 

“I was pretty excited when they responded to my tweet because it showed that they took notice of the issue at hand,” Grizzle said. “I feel that they were in a way forced to respond to the tweet due to the high amount of attention that the tweet had received.” 

Grizzle arranged a meeting with dining services for Friday, but he contracted Influenza and had to cancel. He did not say whether he has rescheduled. He also asked students to send him suggestions for things that could be fixed, and intended to share that with dining services in the meeting.  

“The main suggestion was that they felt as if the cafeteria lacked a diversity of food,” he said. “The suggestions ranged from wanting less carbs and more protein at each meal to having the same amount of options to choose from that students would get when the cafeteria first opened. Students should have the right and ability to come in 15 minutes prior to the cafeteria closing and eat the same food that the cafeteria had when they opened.” 

 Grizzle is not the only student who have been disappointed with CSC’s food services.   

On Oct. 6, 2021, when Student Senate conducted its survey about the fire pit, several students suggested they repurpose the funds to food services. One respondent said, “can we allocate the money for the fire pit and repurpose it toward cafeteria food that isn’t disappointing and disgusting.”  

Tuesday, The Eagle conducted an informal, Instagram survey about the quality  of Food Services. The results showed that 63 out of 75 students surveyed felt unsatisfied with the food services on campus. In addition, 15 people wrote comments and of those, two were positive, two were from non-CSC related people and 11 were negative.

Among the comments were:

bebewheezy: “Yesterday (Monday) at dinner I got a bowl of cereal and the milk was sour and expired.”

colemartinez: “The food seems okay some days and really bad other days. The inconsistency is not great.”

makayla_denbo: “I’ve been served raw chicken and pork. Honestly, I don’t trust dining to make a basic sandwich.”

jacob_norris72: “They are a risk to the college at this point.”

 trumpetplaya101: “Has gotten somewhat better but still lacks a lot!”

An email sent Tuesday evening and a phone call Wednesday afternoon to Dining Services requesting comment went unanswered.

Senator of BMS and Food Services Student Representative Bryan Zutavern said that dining services is dealing with food costs due to inflation and supply chain issues. 

However, they are working on a “variety of sustainability initiatives to help combat these issues.”

“Currently dining services is getting locally sourced beef, coordinating for local herbs and vegetables, with the goal of an in-house herb garden for the fall semester,” he said. “New meal ideas that have been talked about include holiday meals, monthly features, and specialty nights. Among these include a homecooked meals initiative.”

Zutavern also said that the Food Services Committee has been trying to deal with student issues “to the best of their ability” through the QR code survey posted around the dining hall.