St. Thomas Dining Services said dining options at The View and Northsider will return to normal next fall and plans to advertise the Individual Dietary Needs Form, better educate students about food provisions and fully open the G8 Station, which provides options to students with the top eight food allergens.

Dining Services faced challenges pleasing students with dietary restrictions this year because of COVID-19-related difficulties, and many of those students are asking for them to do better.

“We need to be so much better about educating students about food waste, about sustainable dining, about what’s out there that they might not know is out there,” Executive Director of Dining Services Pamela Peterson said. “I think there’s something on us to communicate better with students all the way around.”

To better educate students, Peterson plans to highlight more of Dining Services’ options next fall. One of these options includes the G8 Station, which she believes will be fully functioning come September 2021.

“One of our challenges this year in the new G8 station that we launched is that there were going to be a lot of self-service items in there like pastas and sauces and due to COVID, we couldn’t launch a full menu,” Peterson said.

Peterson also plans to have better outreach to dietary restricted students by advertising the Individual Dietary Needs Form, which can be found on OneStThomas, next fall.

This form connects dietary restricted students with the registered dietitian on campus to educate them on all of the options available to them. The dietitian will help them create a plan for safe foods they can eat at the dining halls while still using the G8 Station at the Northsider and the gluten free-dairy free cooler at The View.

Vegetarian first-year student Sarah Messer said the Individual Dietary Needs Form could have helped her this year.

“I didn’t know that was a thing. I know that they have the corner for gluten free and dairy free people, which I think is very beneficial for their needs, but I didn’t know that form existed,” Messer said.

Students with dietary restrictions are a group that has found it particularly difficult to eat at the dining halls this school year because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Vegetarian senior Anna Kroll frequented The View and Northsider twice per week until she realized that the options available were very limited for people with her restriction.

“Because they were plating all of the food they were offering on one plate, it was kind of a waste for me to get all the meat as well and just throw it away, so I just stopped going there,” Kroll said.

Kroll also said that it often seemed like the only meatless options available in the dining halls were fish. This is helpful for pescatarians, people who do not eat meat but do eat fish, but for vegetarians like Kroll, this can make it hard for her to find options to eat.

Although the dining halls have had limited meals for vegan students, Sustainability Week in April featured events that included meals specifically catered to vegans.

“I really like it because it’s just implemented into people’s day-to-day routine so you know, you don’t have to go out of your way to go to the event. There were just so many students that didn’t even know Sustainability Week was even happening… they were just trying to get food,” Sophomore Arianna Porcello said.

Sophomore Grace Francque found that Sustainability Week brought her the vegan meals students dreamed of.

“As a vegan, it’s really hard to eat on campus. My main choices for food, most of the time are fries or the salad bar, so to have that opportunity was amazing. I just felt like I could eat here,” Francque said.

Peterson blames some of these limited options for students on a lack of communication by Dining Services when it came to dining at The View and Northsider last semester.

“If you asked, we’d find you something, but we just didn’t want to waste that much food. But we know we have to address it,” Peterson said.

Despite food sourcing difficulties this past year due to the pandemic, Peterson said The View and Northsider will go back to normal, increasing options for dietary restricted students like Kroll and Messer.

“Dining has just not been what it should be, not what we want it to be, because of COVID. Our style of service had to change and I’m just really excited for this fall and to reopen,” Peterson said.

Cam Kauffman can be reached at kauf8536@stthomas.edu.
Josie Morss can be reached at josie.morss@stthomas.edu.