TURITEA DINING HALL FOOD IS CRAPOLA
OPINION: Sarah Harris says competition on campus would encourage the serving of edible food. THE MASSEY UNIVERSITY TURITEA CAMPUS Dining Hall is a place where students and staff gather to eat, study, and catch up with friends, especially during the common break on Wednesdays from 12pm till 2pm when no one has anywhere else to be and good luck getting a free computer at the library. The Dining Hall predominantly serves the purpose of feeding the first years living in the halls, their bright young faces lining up each night at 5pm to get dinner and excitedly chattering about the news of the day, who’s sleeping with who in their hall, who they think has a good chance of getting into vet (sadly, statistically most of them won’t, but they don’t need to know that yet), and so on. They tuck into plates full of food served up by staff, who look thoroughly bored, from great vats full of mass-produced food, the surface of which is usually dry and crusted from the bright heat lights above it. Students get the following on their meal plan: one main (from a choice of about five or six, usually including two vegetarian options), salad, and dessert. Doesn’t sound so bad, right? That’s
what parents across the country think when they sign their darlings up for the hall of their choice and the meal plan that goes with it. The meal plan has to at least include dinner if you live in one of the main halls situated directly on campus (Colombo, McHardy, Walter Dyer, Moginie, Craiglockhart, Bindaloe, Miro, Matai, Tawa, Totara) which are the halls that suit the demographic of most of the first years students at Massey. HERE’S A TYPICAL MENU FOR A FIRST YEAR STUDENT AT DINNER: SALAD: This is generally pasta salad, garden salad, and roast vegetable salad. It was always a bit of a mystery to us how they managed to make all three of these salads taste identical. Main: Fatty meat cuts, burgers with slimy lettuce and dry crusted tops, and weird green sludge labelled “curry”. DESSERT: If I ever see another “Golden” pudding again I’ll scream. OTHER: Fridays are always fat boy Friday, with chips, fish in batter, burgers – just stuff that made your arteries clog just by looking at it.
I remember in my first year, some of the people in my hall (Colombo) and I sat down and calculated how much we were paying for each dinner we had at the Dining Hall. We calculated that it was approximately $11 (by subtracting the rent amount from the total we pay, then dividing by seven to work out the cost of each meal, if only on the dinner plan). We then worked out what we could make for ourselves paying that much per meal. We could easily make healthy, nutritious food for ourselves at a fraction of the cost. Good theory, but we couldn’t, because the Halls Community Group didn’t allow self catering in the convenient on-campus Halls, and still don’t. It’s not only first years who have found themselves dissatisfied with over-priced, under-whelming food. Because the Dining Hall is one of the only places to eat on the Turitea campus, students are faced with little option if they don’t have time to make their own food to bring with them. Many students study and work, and time to put into making food daily is something many lack. At most other universities, students have many great options for purchasing food. Waikato has nine different options, while Auckland has 15 cafes and many more shops that sell food items. This issue was raised recently at the VC Forum, where students asked Steve Maharey to comment on the low-quality food served at the Dining Hall. He acknowledged that something needed to be done about it. So what is the solution? One idea is to stop the monopoly that the Dining Hall holds over the campus. Other universities have opened up to businesses opening on campus (such as Auckland having a New Zealand Natural on campus) which promotes more options. This would be especially good for Massey because we are on the edge of Palmerston North and away from town. Perhaps some competition would encourage the Dining Hall to stop serving rubbish and start serving edible food.
STARTUP WEEKEND WINNERS ASK ‘WHAT’S 4 LUNCH?’ A mobile app that gets children helping with food preparation has taken out first prize at Startup Weekend Palmerston North. This was the first Startup Weekend event held outside a major city centre in New Zealand. The weekend-long, hands-on experience gave aspiring entrepreneurs the chance to find out if their startup ideas were viable. In just 54 hours, the winning team developed a website and mobile phone app to get kids interested in the food they eat. Called What’s 4 Lunch, the app provides recipes with information about each of the ingredients, including its origin, along with video and photos. The What’s 4 Lunch team won an $8000 prize package for their efforts.
www.massivemagazine.org.nz
Second place and the Open Data Prize was won by Friendsafe, an app that enables people to share their travel plans and improve personal safety. As well as sharing the start and end-point of a journey with friends, the app also operates as a communication platform and emergency feedback alert that records audio, video, and geo-location data. The Open Data Prize, worth $1000, was awarded for using local open data sources. Little Helper Books received an honourable mention for their concept, which allows parents to create games, apps, and ebooks in which their child is a character to help them deal with difficult situations.
Startup Weekend Palmerston North was managed by the BCC, a Palmerston North based business that specialises in taking technology ideas to market. The weekend was sponsored and hosted at UCOL Palmerston North, with Massey University and Kiwi Landing Pad being the other major sponsors. “I was blown away by the quality of what was achieved over the weekend – it was at the same level as what we've seen come out of Auckland and Wellington,” said Dave Moskovitz, Startup Weekend’s global facilitator. “What really stood out and made all the difference was the teamwork. Teamwork trumps naked skill, and too much ego in a fast-moving high-pressure situation is a recipe for failure.”
15