School food, the phrase alone is enough to strike fear into the minds of anyone who has attended a public school that served low quality food. The phrase ?campus dining? will have a similar effect on most college students. For instance the University of Mary Washington is generally negatively regarded by the student body for their poor campus dining options. Three facilities are available to choose from: Seacobeck, the Nest, and the Underground; despite the three options none of these facilities are satisfactory in the long term.
There are two styles of dining facilities on the Mary Washington campus. One type is the main dining hall which is buffet style and offers a variety of food. The second type is the smaller, coffee shop style dining hall that has a set menu and offers meal deals for a specified amount of food. In theory having one large hall that offers variety and larger quantities of food while having two smaller places where students know what to expect is good. Unfortunately the execution is poor and creates dissatisfaction among the diners.
Seacobeck falls under the first category. Ironically, the dining hall that allows students to get as much food as they want offers arguably the worst quality of food. In fact many students avoid eating there all together, and commonly students talk about the nausea they experience after dining at Seacobeck. Similarly the largest dining facility that offers ?all you can eat? serves the smallest pieces of fruit and does not offer much variety. Each day their breakfast, lunch, and dinner menu is relatively constant. For example, for lunch and dinner in the Washington Diner always has burgers and some form of meet, South Market offers burritos, stir-fry, sushi, and sandwiches everyday, and the Bistro has pizza, pasta, and salads. Students who eat there usually find a few options that do not make them feel sick and alternate between them. In the long run this strategy results in dissatisfaction in the monotony of meals due to the limited selection.      Furthermore, the food offered on the weekends is dismal. Most of the students who stay on the weekend choose to avoid Seacobeck because of their even lower caliber of food than the week days. For instance, their breakfast is given little though or effort because it is assumed that most students will sleep in. Be that true or not, the early risers are left with discontent from the lack of decent food available.
The second style of dining is adopted by the Nest and the Underground, and in general both offer similar food choices. For instance, students can buy pizza, sandwiches, salads, and parfaits from both places. Additionally they offer similar side items such as chips, fruit, coffee or tea.  A major problem with these two facilities is that the meal deals at the Nest and Underground include significantly less food. For example at the Nest students exceed the meal limit and must pay the remainder of the cost when they put meat or nuts on their salads. Both items provide protein and more sustenance to the salad; however students often forgo the nutritional benefit because of the extra financial cost. It can also be noted that the majority of food offered at the Nest and the Underground can also be found at Seacobeck, thus adding to the lack of variety in campus dining in general.
Students looking for healthy options will find Mary Washington?s dining facilities particularly frustrating. Since the majority of food available at the Nest and the Underground is not healthy some people turn to Seacobeck. However the low quality of Seacobeck?s food tends to repel people. Further the semi-healthy options available at the Nest, such as a peanut butter and jelly sandwich or a salad, are not large enough to equate to a satisfying meal; and the minimal selection of healthy side items only add to this problem. On the nights that Seacobeck serves fish, only a few brave students subject themselves to the nausea that follows. As a result of the limited food selection at Mary Washington, many dissatisfied health conscious people do not use the campus dining services at all.
Ultimately, the students? complaints about campus dining are not merely the product of picky eating habits or high maintenance tastes. In general what the students are asking of their campus dining services are reasonable; a certain quality of food, variety of the menu, availability of healthy options, and more reasonable quantity of food served at the Nest and the Underground. Humans need food to supply the energy required for their bodies to function, at schools where the objective is the enhancement of intelligence the dynamics of the dining halls should be taken into more consideration.