Students want a wider variety of foods on the weekends

By Felicia Roehm

Everyone is excited when Friday finally arrives; however, students who live on campus have fewer meal options over the weekend.

On Friday night, the only restaurant open in Cranberry’s are The Pub and Wendy’s. Starbucks is also available, but closes at 7 p.m., and students would like more variety on the weekends with their meal swipes. Although Daly’s is open all day, the distance for students who live in Lake House, Longstreet House, Phi Sigma Sigma Sorority House or Beckett Village is 15 minutes each way, which takes the students a total of 30 minutes just to get a meal. Some of the restaurants close relatively early, so if students are hungry later at night after working on school work, they will either have to eat food in their dorm if they have it, or wait until the next day to eat something. Cranberry’s is much closer, but the options are limited. Students get tired of the same old hamburger and fries every weekend.

Wendy’s is delicious, but not every student wants to eat there all the time because it isn’t very nutritious and only accepts BroncBucks instead of meal exchanges. Starbucks is great, but also only accepts BroncBucks.

Unfortunately, Saxby’s is closed on the weekends, leaving Daly’s as the only meal exchange option for breakfast. Most college students don’t wake up that
early, and by the time they do, breakfast at the dining hall might be over. There is a teaching kitchen at Daly’s, but not every student knows how to cook or wants to prepare their own food.

Also, the meal exchange menus and the BroncBucks menus are very different. There are many more options on the BroncBucks menu, especially if someone is vegetarian or vegan. However, students may not want to use all their BroncBucks in just the first month of the semester.

Other schools like Rowan University have what they call Rowan Bucks, and
the university collaborates with local restaurants where students are able to use their Rowan Bucks to pay for a meal there instead of paying with the student’s own money. This gives students the opportunity to go out to eat at different places without breaking the bank. Rider students agree that an option to be able to go out and use their BroncBucks at other restaurants is a wonderful idea. It would give students a bigger assortment of restaurants to choose from.

Although Rider may not have that plan in place, another option could be to rotate the different restaurants in Cranberry’s. The pizza place could be open one weekend, and the sushi restaurant could be open the next weekend. That way, the employees at Cranberry’s don’t have to work every weekend, and students won’t have to keep ordering the same food for 48 hours. Since students who live on campus are required to get a meal plan, then the meal choices on the weekends should be similar to the meal choices during the school week.

This editorial expresses the unanimous opinion of The Rider News Editorial Board. This week’s editorial was written by Opinion Editor Felicia Roehm.