“It’s all about choice,” says UB Wellness Center dietician Janice Cochran of food service on campus and eating healthy. “What are you choosing?”
Well, for many UB students, the healthy choices just aren’t that appealing, and their waistlines are becoming the disturbing illustration to go along with Campus Dining and Shops’s sad story.
Lately, CD&S has been promoting their renovations of food service on campus, but personally speaking, the effects are hard to find. Yes, we have double “V” and carrot symbols for vegetarian and vegan food, and there are salad bars in the dining halls, but when the salad is white or brown rather than green, and the egg salad sandwich in Putnam’s is marked vegan, it’s not that impressive.
Plus, what about food service after 7 p.m.? Many on-campus students stay up late, and if they must eat in the dining hall, the latest they can do that is 7 p.m. After three and half or four hours, most people start getting hungry again, but the healthy choices just aren’t there for midnight snackers. Hubies in Ellicott, the Cellar in Governors, and Burger King in the Commons are the only options (besides chips from a vending machine) after dining hall hours.
But eating isn’t the only component of the healthy lifestyle UB pays lip service to, and isn’t really promoting. Athletics classes are some of the most difficult classes to get into, and if you’re a freshman, good luck. After doing a lot of addition on the course schedule webpage for Spring 2005, I found that only 19 different types of classes are offered, divided into 41 sections. Some may say that’s a good enough selection, and maybe they’re right, but only 902 students are registered in those classes. For the 17,838 undergrads, that’s less than 20 percent enrolled, and if you include the 9,438 grad students who aren’t even allowed to take athletics classes, the percentage drops to only 3.3 percent of all UB students. Plus, even if you somehow got into athletics classes in your freshman and sophomore years, you’re only allowed eight ATH credits. Translation: even if you wanted to take an athletics class every semester, two years is all you get.
Now I am not saying that UB is actively trying to make us fat by any means, but there is no harm in being just a tad proactive towards students’ physical health as well as their mental health. It’s a stressful situation when people first come to college. New living situation, new friends, new classes, new habits, new routines. When the most prolific food offering is chicken fingers and you can’t register for an athletics class if you try, you’re bound to face weight issues.
Adding more variety to the healthy food places on campus along with increasing fruit and vegetable quality (maybe looking in to an organic food provider), and offering more healthy options after dining hall hours would be a good place to start. Also, I suggest adding more and different athletics classes – enough so that at the very least, a third of undergrads can enroll. (Oh, and let’s knock off that paying for aerobics and spinning classes crap. Undergrads pay a whopping $1,131 in fees every year, and aerobics once or twice a week should be available free of extra charge.) Finally, adding an athletics sampling course to the general education requirements for freshman, in which students can try a new physical activity each week would open students up to new exercising possibilities, and starting them off on the right foot with a new habit of weekly exercise at school might help.
Though money is always a deterrent to new class offerings and more expensive food choice programs, health is one of the few things well worth any expense. Because at the rate we’re going, we’ll be a class of smart, successful pharmacists and lawyers who have to use all that money we’ve earned to buy two airplane seats on our way to conferences.
26 Days ‘Til Graduation,
Jenny
