WOOD Dining improves quality

Everyday students and faculty trickle in and out of our Founder's Hall dining hall. The Wood challenge: "To create and offer services that contribute to a more pleasant way of life for people wherever and whenever they come together."

So far this year I understand that there have been some imperfections, the wait at the door being one of them. I ask you all to understand that there have been some new changes this year with the card swiping system. Adding this to the usual hustle at the beginning of the semester was hard on everyone involved.

We were required to re-enter students into our foodservice database, along with entering all the incoming freshmen. After that, we have to ensure that all of the upper-classmen are on the meal plan of their choice. Only then can we distribute the flex dollars per account.

Our team of professionals have put in long hours to complete all of them. We are also happy to inform you that in a couple of weeks we will be receiving a new access system, for card swiping, that will be setup on a network line as opposed to our existing telephone line.

We want everyone to know that we are here for you. I, personally, have had special requests, and I will do everything in my power to achieve them. We would also ask you to realize that with the enormous incoming freshman class that the dining hall is responsible for being able to feed almost 830 people, not including cash paying customers.

We believe that the options are here for everyone. Meals are available for 10 hours between 7:30 white powdery substance found at the party; that nobody involved in the party called 911 ; and that once the student was evacuated to the hospital, the party continued. These statements, I must stress, are only rumors, not facts. I catalogue them here for tv.o reasons: first to show the magnitude of the issues this situation potentially indicates about the state of our community, and second to show the dangerous assumptions that can surface in the absence of a thorough public discussion of the actual facts of the case.

A respectful, carefully researched story about this event could have addressed these concerns. The interests of those friends currently caught in the web of rumors could have been protected by hard facts. The college community could have begun to talk about mental health issues, alcohol and drug abuse, the balance between "narcing" and seeking help from the authorities, and other issues in an environment supercharged by a new awareness that these problems aren't simply moral abstractions, but rather very real dangers that directly affect us. But we don't have that story. What will most likely happen is that there will be a lot of talk on campus for a while that will degenerate into blaming the jumper alone for this event. People will simply say, "She was messed up" and avoid asking the harder questions about what the campus community could and should have done to help her. It's a very effective way of avoiding the difficult moral questions these sorts of events should compel each of us to ask.

By choosing not to cover this story within the Cabrini community, the Loquitur let these rumors have the day, a decision I find simply unconscionable given the amount of freedom the newspaper enjoys. While those of you on the staff have the freedom to cover the stories you choose to cover, my hope for future issues is that you will have the journalistic integrity and moral fortitude to perform your critical role as the student voice of the Cabrini community.

Dr. Harold William Halbert

New, friendly campus

a.m. and 7:30 p.m., with a meal card, in either the dining hall or the food court. All students living on campus have the option to eat at the food court and use the cash equivalency option of their meal card.

We try to come up with diverse wholesome food that conforms to everyone's needs. We have~anized a survey on Thursday, ct. 10, where we will expect ev ryone to "give us your two cents." There will be a dining committee meeting on Thursday, Oct. 24, 12:30 p.m., in the dining hall. As Jerry McGuire said, "help me help you." When it comes to food quality, or food variety, I beg of you JUST ASK.

Christian Holmwood WOOD Dining

I don't know if anyone else has felt what I have in the last five weeks of being back at school. The air on Cabrini's campus has changed, the feeling you get walking from class to class or sitting in the food court is different than what it use to be. There has always been that sense of "Cabrini" spirit, but now it is more of a "school" spirit and not just from the students.

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After all the changes that happened from last year to this year, I was a little worried about what this year was going to be like, what new restrictions were going to be put on the entire campus. I feel less restricted than I did before and more welcomed at the school.

Take for example the Student Development Office. If you walked up there last year for anything, even a sl)ottle schedule, it / , was like walking into a place that seemed shut off to students. The door to the main part of the office was shut, as were the office doors. Walk up there now and go say "Hi'' to Dr. Neville, his do_oris open, he will hear you. Sit down, make a new friend and no one is going to yell. For any residents who stay here on the weekends and attend the campus-sponsored events, they should be noticing something. It's not just students there anymore, and the administration overseeing the event isn't sitting on the side somewhere reading a book. They are interacting, they are speaking to the students. They are making the students feel like people.

Sincerely,

Liz Malgieri junior,business major