by Catherine Arjet

opinions editor

If you ask most students what they think about the cafeteria they’re not too excited about it, but I think it’s pretty good for what it does. Think about it. They have to feed an entire college multiple times a day. We expect to have hot meals waiting for us when we walk in the door anytime between 7am and 8pm. That’s kind of a lot to ask. Look, it might not be the best food in the world, but it’s food ready made for us whenever we want it. Maybe some people who came to Millsaps are used to their parents making food for them everyday, but as the daughter of a single mom, I cooked for myself (and often my brother) all throughout high school. Not only is this food better than what I could make at age fourteen, but also it doesn’t involve planning, cooking or cleaning. Yes, I know, we do pay for it, but if you calculate the amount of food we eat plus the pay of everyone who plans out the meals, arranges for the food to be delivered to Millsaps, cooks the food, cleans the caf, serves the food and washes dishes for every single meal, we eat here for not actually that bad of a price.

Also, we call it bad quality, but if you look at what we ate in high school, it’s not actually that bad. I went to a private school with a team of great cooks and it still wasn’t better than caf food. People who went to public school know the horror of bad cafeteria food all too well and know that caf food is nothing like that. It’s not the best in the world but you can’t feed large amounts of people good food quickly and cheaply. It just doesn’t work that way. And if you get creative, it can be fun, just ask the creators of the Caf Hacks Instagram who find new and interesting ways to eat in the caf.

I guess all I’m really saying is that we ask a lot of the cafeteria and the people who work there. While it isn’t five star good dining, it’s not horrible and we should give them credit for the hard work they do.