I’d venture a guess that anyone who primarily eats food on campus has at least a couple problems with the food on campus. Whether it’s struggles to accommodate dietary restrictions, a seemingly endless string of raw food allegations, or extremely questionable specials, this seems to be the one thing that unites students here. However, there are two specific recent incidents that I want to bring to people’s attention, as they show a larger area of concern.
First, the Commons served bratwursts as a grill special on Monday, April 7. I’m eating my meal when one of my friends puts her stuff down across from me. She mentions that she will get a bratwurst for lunch and walks off towards the grill station.
I continue nibbling on my food, but it’s getting to be a weirdly long amount of time for her to be gone. She then texts me, asking if we can swap places while waiting for the bratwurst. She’s disabled and can’t stand for longer periods of time. She’d already been waiting there for 20 minutes and was feeling lightheaded and unstable. I agree, and I go to stand around waiting for the order.
About 10 minutes later, the employees make an announcement: If you are waiting for a bratwurst, it’s going to be at least 10-15 more minutes. This is the first time that they’ve made any indication of a wait time. I text my friend, and at this point, she just gives up and gets something else. She doesn’t have all day to eat, and 45 minutes is ridiculously long for a bratwurst. For reference, most online recipes that I can find for a bratwurst estimate cooking time at 10-20 minutes for pan-frying or a flat-top grill (like the one they were using at the grill station). The rest just give guidelines based on the coloration of the meat.
If the employees were cooking the bratwursts for that entire time, then either they weren’t fully defrosted when they started cooking, or the grill wasn’t up to temperature. As someone who has worked in a commercial kitchen before, both options are unsafe for food. If not, then that means it took over 20 minutes from when the order came in to when they put the bratwursts on. And that’s just a waste of everybody’s time.
In the second, I was in the library, checking out the vending machines. This one is more concerning, as while incompetence might explain the wait time, it wouldn’t work here. These are in the Canteen vending machines. Both photos were taken on April 13, 2025. One has a “USE BY:” sticker dated 10 days before that, and the other is just fully undated (which is also very unsafe). Now, I will acknowledge that the other food in the machine was dated to a safe time, but this is still very unhealthy and unsafe. I’m not sure that there’s much more that I can add to this one. Make sure you’re careful about what you eat from these machines, because this is not safe.
I just wanted to bring these to people’s attention. Whether it’s a bratwurst with a suspiciously long cook time, or an unlabelled re-heatable package of White Castle sliders, food safety is a real and important concern. Those responsible for food safety on campus – whether Chartwells in the Commons, or Canteen at the vending machines – need to do more to make sure students aren’t exposed to something unsafe.