The unbearable cost of eating: SFU's dining hall giving a true meaning to "starving students"

The unbearable cost of eating:

SFU Dining Hall giving a true meaning to "starving students"

BURNABY – Canada, a country that ranks in the highest positions for humanitarian aid to third world countries. A country which is often regarded to have one of the best health systems (see Moore’s Sicko). Yet, a country which does not care about its university students, at least at SFU Burnaby.

Apart from the various tuition fees issues that are discussed almost weekly on SFU’s newspaper (“The Peak”), there is a much bigger problem that has been arising throughout the past years. That is, students are spending a consistent part of their budget on food. Let’s clarify the meaning of “consistent” here. An average meal at SFU Burnaby’s Dining Hall costs about 10 dollars, going up to 15 if the meal includes barbequed meat. If we supposed breakfast to be costing about $5, it turns out that the average student spends about $900 a month to eat on campus. It sounds like an odd number, quite high for a student’s budget. But there is more: the majority of the students who live on campus are forced to eat their meals in the Dining Hall. That is, the biggest residences in campus (The 3 new “Towers”) do not have kitchens available for students.
Because of this, is it compulsory for their residents to purchase the so called Meal Plan, when signing the residence contract. No worries, my friends, you can always choose which size your meal plan is going to be, starting from just $1350 a term! And as if it was not enough, almost all freshmen are placed in the Towers for their first year.  Good luck newcomers!

As an international student here at SFU, these facts and figures appear quite odd to me. Due to a combination of events, I have the luck of living in one of the other residences, and have a wonderful, functional kitchen available for me. Doing some calculations about the past months, I found out that I have been spending an average of $200 per month on groceries. To make an even more stunning comparison, we could suppose the average student liked to eat out everyday, say in Commercial Drive, or at T&T. it appears that an average satisfying meal would cost no more than $10, including pops.

After taking all these considerations, it is not completely wrong to say that eating in the Dining Hall is similar to going out daily for lunch and dinner. It is comforting, though, to know that this unfortunate situation does not occur everywhere. In former-second-world-country Poland, for example, the most expensive meal can cost up to $4. Conversely, in messy, loud lazy Italy, meals are actually priced accordingly to one's income. The poorest students get one free meal per day, while the other meal costs around $2. Professors on the other hand pay almost $10.

After all this, many questions may come to our minds, like: Why is the dining hall so overpriced? Why is the almost the whole catering system at SFU Burnaby managed by such a big company like Chartwells? Does this not go against all of the initiatives that students are taking on campus?
I sense this is the time to try finding an answer to these questions, this is the time to stop bragging about sending so much help to third world countries and start looking at what is happening in our own countries. This is the time to take action.