Tne End of An Era at Kettering

I lifted this editorial article from the most recent edition of Flyer News. At first, I was heartbroken. I mean, this isn't what Clarke worked so hard for (those 4 or 5 days he was employed at Kettering)! My memory isn't as sharp as Sas', so you'll all have to help me out on the nicknames we gave the VWK staff, the dumb eating contests I assume we challenged each other to, etc.

Volume 55, Number 33

Wonderful era in UD dining ends, farewell all-you-can-eat
Corey Griffin

A great era of dining at the University of Dayton has come to an end. The Virginia W. Kettering cafeteria has shut down to change its style from a full buffet to a la carte.
Shame on you, Dining Services.

In a day of the flex plan, inflation and rising food costs, the other cafeterias aren’t quite giving students what they need.

A walk through the Kennedy Union cafeteria showed Vitamin Water priced at $2.50 for a 20 oz. bottle, a dollar for a cookie less than the size of a palm, and $4 for a small group of undersized chicken strips. A sign placed next to the fruit advertised that the price of the healthy snacks had skyrocketed to a whopping $3.75 per plastic container.

That being said, $6.25 (up 50 cents from the 2005-2006 school year) was a deal that students could not pass up. It was a deal where they could actually fill up their stomachs.

Take, for example, the Emporium. If an average student is to visit the convenience store in Marianist Hall, they will be greeted with a deli line reaching the building’s lobby. They’ll wait in line for 20-25 minutes to get their sandwich, and then wait another five minutes in the line for the cash register.

Another rude awakening will be when their meal plan will cover only a $3 sandwich, a $1.34 bottle of Coca-Cola (because you have to include the tax now), and maybe an overpriced $2.19 container of grapes. That’s a $6.53 lunch. And if you decide to do this everyday, you’d better be ready to call mom and dad to put more money on your Flyer Express to make it through the last month of the school year — if you’re on the flex meal plan.

At VWK, things were different. Students could fill up on fruits and vegetables — as many as they wanted. They could fill up on cheeseburgers, desserts and the friendly ice cream machines. Unfortunately, the days of a good deal are gone at UD.

When students signed on for the flex plan, they were told that about a third of their money would go to cafeteria costs. Shouldn’t this be enough to run a cafeteria that serves less-than-desirable food anyway?

UD says that they are “losing money” on the VWK cafeteria — yeah, because students are actually eating what they need to, in order to have enough energy to make it through a long school day.

Maybe the university should blame some of the money losses to big projects where money could have been spent differently. And the spending spree will continue with the campus master plan. While students at public institutions in the state will benefit from the freezing of tuition costs, Dayton students will be burdened with tuition bills that have been skyrocketing for years.

Sure, many of these projects have given us opportunities and some have been very beneficial to the university, but maybe scaling back some of these projects would prove to be more cost effective and achieve the same result.


I know what you're thinking: "Dammit, Costello. Why didn't you link to the crime log?! I just read that whiny kid's rant, assuming it would somehow connect to random theft and public urination!!" Sadly, they have apparently stopped publishing the crime log. I had to go all the way back to April of 2007 to find one: Enjoy.