Most Cornellians know the struggle of our painfully limited dining options on Central Campus. The daily choice between using up BRBs at a café, venturing to another part of campus, scavenging for leftover snacks in our bags, not eating at all or dining at Okenshields (enough said) consistently proves to be one of the most difficult ones of each day. It shouldn’t be, since the average Cornell undergraduate student on a meal plan pays between $4,896 and $7,132 a year to eat at dining halls and eateries on campus.
Most undergraduate meal plans include some combination of meal swipes, Big Red Bucks, and guest swipes. All three payment options are accepted at Cornell’s dining halls, however specialized eateries across campus only accept credit or debit cards, mobile payments and Big Red Bucks (BRBs), which, according to the university’s Student and Campus Life website, are “a dollar-for-dollar, tax-exempt, debit declining plan.” Students on undergraduate meal plans will typically receive 400 to 500 BRBs to spend per semester; in theory, this is a hefty amount of bucks. In reality, students often forgo eating in dining halls during the day and burn through BRBs by the middle of the semester (if they even make it that far).
Some of the food court-style cafeterias on Central Campus include Mac’s, Terrace and Trillium. While Mac’s and Terrace are specialty eateries associated with The Statler Hotel at Cornell, Trillium is an on-campus food court in Roberts Hall that offers a variety of food options ranging from Asian dishes, salads, burgers, sandwiches and more. Most of what Trillium has to offer is very much on par with the rest of Cornell dining, as its dishes arguably rival those of Morrison Dining or Cook House Dining Room. However, while a typical dining room is an all-you-can-eat experience, Trillium is a pay-per-item situation, with full entrées typically averaging around $7 to $14. This makes for a somewhat expensive meal, especially if you make a trip to Trillium multiple times a week.
Aside from the aforementioned examples, as well as a few other cafés and restaurants on Central that don’t accept meal swipes either, the only other option for students who want to stay on Central during the day is Okenshields.
Okenshields, which lives in the basement of Willard Straight Hall, is the only dining option on Central Campus which accepts meal swipes as payment. Though you’re usually greeted by friendly dining staff at the door, the experience usually deteriorates quickly from there. With food options ranging from fried catfish to Cornell Manhattan clam chowder, the assortment is often random at best, and somehow (without fail), I always leave with an upset stomach and in a worse mood.
Even if collective sentiment about Okenshields’ quality of food is dramatized, it is still unacceptable that there is only one dining hall that allows students to use meal swipes on Central. Setting aside critiques about the taste (and effects on one’s digestive system) of its food, Okenshields is still far from most academic buildings on Central and overcrowded most days. Liat Cohen ’27, who actually enjoyed eating at the dining hall as a first-year student, recalled aspects of impracticality with eating at Okenshields. “I went to Okenshields a few times freshman year and thought [the food] was good — no real complaints. It was just far from all of my classes, and it was way too crowded a lot of the time.”
Though now primarily dependent on her sorority house’s meal plan, Cohen still remembers struggling to find a sustainable lunch break option as a first-year student. “When I was more reliant on a meal plan and could go to dining halls whenever I wanted, it was annoying to have to choose between going back to North, spending money or being hungry.” This statement rings especially true for students who have back-to-back classes, a scenario in which they cannot go back to North, West or South Campus to eat during the day. In an incredibly competitive environment where students take on multiple challenging courses and hours of extracurricular activities a day, the last thing students should worry about is if they are able to eat on campus.
There needs to be a better solution. The argument for Trillium not accepting meal swipes is that entrées vary in prices, and it would be unrealistic to ask the university to allow students to use their swipes to pay for multiple specialty food items. The first option would be to enact a program in which meal swipes cover a just portion of the cost of food items bought at Trillium, a plan which would likely reduce the burden of Trillium’s prices on students’ bank accounts and prevent students from abusing the meal swipe choice.
Zoe Grotegut ’27 and Sophia Marangoudakis ’27, who both lived on South Campus last year but have since moved to North Campus and switched to unlimited meal plans, truly understand how inconvenient the lack of Central Campus dining halls is. When asked about whether or not Trillium should accept meal swipes as a form of payment, both were of the opinion that it absolutely should. “I think Trillium should at least allow students on meal plans to subsidize their meal with a meal swipe (for example, students get a certain amount of money off of their meal by using a swipe). There is only one meal swipe option on central campus, and it is very far from many students' classes (especially students whose classes are predominantly near the Ag Quad and Human Ecology buildings),” noted Grotegut. “Additionally, our meal plans are already so expensive, and it is unfair for us to have to pay that much out of pocket money for Trillium when our limited BRBs run out.”
Marangoudakis also brought up an interesting point about the potential for Trillium to serve a different sector of students because of its more central location, which could solve the overcrowding issue Okenshields so often succumbs to. There may be an argument here about transforming Trillium into a full blown dining hall. Most items at Trillium that are not formal entrées can be purchased in other cafés in the same area, such as Big Red Barn and Rusty’s. Furthermore, the price of entrées is basically equal to what it costs to pay out-of-pocket to eat in a dining hall if you aren’t on a meal plan, as the price at the door is $15.50 for lunch Monday through Saturday.
Students pay too much for their meal plans for swipes to not be a valid form of payment at all of the eateries on Central Campus save Okenshields. Implementing a meal swipe option at Trillium — or another eatery on Central Campus — would not only alleviate both the financial and physical burden on students but also provide a more accessible, practical and equitable dining experience for all Cornellians.
Maia Mehring is a sophomore in the School of Industrial and Labor Relations. She can be reached at mjm743@cornell.edu.
