To Colleen Wright-Riva, Dining Services director,

As an unwilling customer of Dining Services, and a (usual) patron of the North Campus Dining Hall, I am extremely dissatisfied with our campus dining plan, and I feel the need to voice my displeasure.

First, it is uncomfortable to be a 20-year-old with such little control over my dining experience. Any time the diner is packed to its breaking point or closed at unreasonable hours, I am inconvenienced. Sadly, these inconveniences are not at all unusual to our diner. For some reason, just when we need the diner the most, it’s closed. If finding employees for weekends and finals week seems daunting, I do not sympathize. I’m now a Shuttle-UM driver, and there are other students on this campus willing to work.

Crowding issues could probably be alleviated by extending certain days to Late Night. We’re not elderly folks, tucking in at 9 p.m.

Second, to have to pay the prices we do to wait in ridiculous lines for the food we are offered is offensive. I’ve certainly been charged upwards of $3 for a bowl of cereal at our diner. I also despise paying the full wrap price when I do not want heavily-salted chips or pretzels included in my meal. And how about some vegetable options with that? I don’t recall exactly how expensive an order of fried chicken tenders is, but the portions are sometimes pitifully small — and in my opinion, the product is awful. Late Night can offer some of the most stinging blows, price-wise. An order of a few wings or five wimpy mozzarella sticks can be over $5, if prices from last year still hold. These prices, in correlation to food quality, are unacceptable.

Third, do you know why people steal your glasses and silverware? It’s because “the diner steals from us,” as I’ve often heard. While I absolutely do not condone diner theft — especially not by those angry patrons I’ve seen leaving with entire cups of diner silverware or dozens of glasses — I agree. The diner steals from us, and we have no choice but to let it. I would not be buying our dining plan if my parents had given me the choice to live elsewhere. And, by the way, they are no happier than I that I have to subsist on these rations. The relationship seems more hostile when you factor in the occasional run-in with employees. If you recognized my name, Ms. Wright-Riva, you were correct; I was arbitrarily verbally harassed and intentionally charged double for a value meal roughly a year ago, and believe me, you heard about it. I’ve been yelled at for adding a few pieces of romaine to the top of my burger, which costs enough to warrant plenty of lettuce. Going into the wrap line is like playing roulette, because you can never be sure that the employees will give you what you ordered. One nameless diner employee once warned us not to nibble our food while hungrily waiting in line, because if the manager saw us at it, we could be charged up to $20 as a penalty.

All of this creates a hostile air around our dining program. This is not something that goes unnoticed by prospective students. Whenever parents or high schoolers on tour approach me in the diner to ask about the services’ quality (which is a frequent event), I mince no words in telling them that it is awful. While this may not concern the students, it clearly gives pause to some of the parents who are more involved in their children’s school choice. Again, while I do not accept stealing from dining facilities, I will do everything in my power to damage its reputation through dissent. I am not an atypical customer. We’re fed up!

My demand is, at the very least, a campuswide poll to measure just how unhappy we are with the dining plan and why. Please give us this — we deserve it after paying the price of such a cruel dining plan for years.

Adam Darchicourt is a sophomore business major. He can be reached at adam.darch@gmail.com.