Any student who has dined in the UW’s campus

dining halls can attest to the wide variety of exotic meals.

However, catering to the demands of picky students at a

time when the market cost of food is rapidly increasing

comes at a price — a price that students have to pay.

As admission to universities becomes more and more

competitive, students are are getting pickier about the

food they eat on campus, according to an article in The

New York Times by Michael S. Sanders.

The quality of campus dining has become a criterion

that high school seniors use to eliminate potential college

choices.

“I didn’t apply to Bates [College in Maine], because,

well, I ate there; the meal was not very good,” said

high school senior Lucas Braun, as quoted in theTimes.

“There’s something subliminal from the food you see in

the dining hall and the meal they give you that influences

your decision.”

As opposed to college students from the past,

students today are unsatisfied with meatloaf and boxed

mashed potatoes.

The UW’s dining halls are not immune to this shift

toward gourmet meals. UW chefs struggle to keep up

with diners who demand vegetarian, vegan, organic and

specialty foods, while also keeping dining plans costeffective.

Unfortunately, when students returned from spring

break, they found that the price of food on campus had

increased.

“All of the food in [Terry-Lander’s] Eleven01 is more

expensive,” sophomore Alexa Rhoads said. “A small salad

used to be $1.79; now it’s $2.25. You used to be able to

pay $3.50 for a vegetarian pasta dish; now it’s at least

$4.25.”

The price hike took freshman Jed Bradley by

surprise.

“I never

got an email

from HFS about

the price increase,”

he said.

Because residents

are bound to a

certain dollar level on

their dining accounts,

the unexpected changes

have diners worried about

depleting their dining money

before the end of the quarter.

“I had [dining account] money

rolled over, so I should be fine,”

Bradley said. “I know some people

who switched down to a lower level

[before spring quarter] because they had

money rolled over, and now they’re afraid of

running out.”

The price hike at Eleven01 Cafe could

be attributed to their effort to keep up with the

growing trend of offering gourmet foods. Nightly

entrees at Eleven01 include extravagant entrees like

cilantro orange pork, Moroccan lamb and naan bread

with spiced basmati rice.

However, worried students on the lowest level

dining accounts should be wary of blaming those with

sophisticated palates as the sole cause of the price hike.

According to a special report by MIT’s Technology

Review, the increased demand for ethanol biofuel has

resulted in a 70 percent increase in the price of crops

like corn.

“All things that use corn are going to have higher

prices and higher cost, to some extent, that will be passed

on to consumers,” said Wally Tyner, professor at Purdue

University, in the Technology Review.

Although

the efforts of oncampus

dining halls to create

delicious meals do not go unappreciated, at the

end of the day, college students are not picky.

“I don’t mind paying a little more for gourmet style

food,” Bradley said. “But really, I just want something

that will fill me up.

[Reach reporter Kyle Frischkorn at news@thedaily.washington.edu.]