Undercooked chicken served by Millersville Dining. KATELYN AUTY / SNAPPER
Katelyn Auty
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I lived in summer housing for a portion of this summer while I waited for move-in day for my off-campus housing. During that time, I had the displeasure of dealing with Millersville Dining.
After charging a prorated price of $1,800 just to live on campus with no dining options open, Millersville threw another $800 charge onto my account and gave me $150 Flex Dollars and 60 meal swipes. During this time, the only dining hall open was the Upper Deck.
As any Millersville student knows, there isn’t anything to use Flex on if the Upper Deck is all that’s open and you have meal swipes available. I will say it is good that my Flex carried over into the fall semester, but it took a week of going back and forth with dining to finally get access to my Flex dollars. I am happy that it got resolved, but incredibly frustrated it took so much effort and time to get it transferred when I was told that it would automatically transfer over.
I moved out of summer housing on July 26, less than 20 days after the meal plan began. Having already had to fend for myself all summer, I don’t understand why I was forced to have a meal plan when I was just living in summer housing for just 20 more days.
I went back and forth with dining for a few days asking if I could opt out or if they would prorate the cost so I didn’t have to pay for the entire summer dining session. Dining refused both requests.
My first problem with dining this summer, other than the price, was the hours. The Upper Deck was the only option available and was open 7:30-9:00 for breakfast, 11:00-1:00 for lunch, and 4:00-6:00 for dinner. I worked full-time all summer, so I had very limited time to go to the Upper Deck and use my meal swipes. I could not attend breakfast and barely made it in time to eat lunch.
Millersville also hosted a myriad of camps for sports and religious organizations that ate at the Upper Deck with all the students staying in summer housing. These camps were massive, with hundreds of children flooding the Upper Deck at all times it was open.
The lack of time I had and the amount of young children screaming and running around in the Upper Deck made eating there a nightmare for me. What was supposed to be my break from work became something I dreaded.
During the dining period, which lasted from July 8 to August 16, I was able to use 47 meal swipes, one of which was used to have a meal with a friend. Of the 46 meal swipes I personally used, I had pasta 13 times, some form of chicken 16 times, and a salad 10 times. This is not because I’m a pasta, chicken, or salad fanatic, but quite simply because there were no other options for me.
Millersville Dining loves to throw cheese on everything they make, perhaps to mask the fact that there is no flavor, and this summer was no exception. I am lactose intolerant, a fact that dining was made aware of via a letter from my doctor. Because of this, I could not eat a majority of the options. I frequently walked into the Upper Deck to see grilled cheese or mac and cheese as my only option for my entrée other than a salad.
The quality of the food was also not good, which made the repetition of meals especially upsetting. I’d understand if they were churning out high-quality meals and wanted to adopt an “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it” type of mindset, but the food was in fact broken. The pasta was consistently overcooked and the food was dry. The chicken was either so undercooked that it was still pink and I didn’t feel safe eating it or so overcooked I had to douse it in sauce just to get it down.
I contacted three people within the dining department to try to get accommodations for my lactose intolerance and to get permission to take food out of the Upper Deck when I could not finish during my short lunch break. There were signs posted everywhere that made it very clear that you were not allowed to bring food out, so I followed their rules and abided by those signs. I got one response saying that they would forward my request to the necessary people, but no responses from said people.
After having to work full-time and pay every charge out of pocket this summer, I was extremely disappointed that this was my experience. Ultimately, this experience made me feel as if Millersville cares more about money than its students.