When entering the Capital Court (MDR) last Friday for lunch, I was not expecting anything out of the ordinary, just another adequate meal prepared for me by the hard-working people at Parkhurst.
On this day, I didn’t feel like eating a chicken fillet or pizza. I was taking the health conscious route by going directly to the salad bar for the first time this semester. I returned with my friends to find that hidden below the leafy greens of my salad was a curled up black millipede.
I am not the only student who almost bit down on one of these crunchy critters. After word of my recent encounter spread around campus, a few others came forward with their own similar experiences.
“I was about to take a bite of cereal and there was a little brown bug on it. Basically, I just threw it away and made a sandwich and didn’t think anything of it,” Skylar Clay, sophomore, said. “I was a little afraid, but it’s what I eat there so I just really don’t have a choice. But I haven’t had it for a few days.”
Another student reported a similar incident, but wanted to remain anonymous for this story.
“Last Thursday, when the MDR was doing that special style dinner, with the Main Event and the pizza place closed down, I went to go get some food round 6 or 6:15. I got this pasta they had, and while I was eating it, I looked at this thing and thought ‘Hmm, this doesn’t seem right…oh, it’s a ladybug,’” the student said.
“Of course I was grossed out, but I didn’t scream or yell at the cooks or anything like that. I just stopped eating the food from that area of the MDR that night. Of course I did let them know in the form of a comment card, in which I may have attached the evidence to the card.”
Although this may be another reason not to eat in the MDR, for most Capital students, eating food provided by Parkhurst is unavoidable. If you live on campus and don’t keep illegal kitchen appliances in your room, you eat at the Cru Club, the Mezz, or the MDR multiple times every day.
“I still eat there just about every day,” said the anonymous student. “I don’t have the money to go out to eat every day, or the facilities (or ability) to make my own food. Plus, I’m on a large meal plan, so I have to make the best of it. Next year I hope to room somewhere that isn’t in the dorms, and then I’ll either reduce or eliminate my meal plan and do my own food.”
Eating in the MDR is unavoidable for students because it is the only relatively low-cost meal option for students. But what is avoidable is the presence of pests in our food.
Let me just say that Parkhurst is not the bad guy here. Despite the slow service in the Cru Club, same old food in the MDR, and occasionally running out of ice cream cones right when you need them the most, Parkhurst does a pretty good job.
According to Shane Green, a manager in the MDR, and Laura Hovanes, the Parkhurst director of board operations at Capital, the incidents with the millipede and the ladybug were isolated.
Parkhurst responded swiftly and correctly after both of these incidents by enforcing on their employees stricter standards on rinsing salad before it goes in the salad bar. In general, they have enforced stricter monitoring methods so as to catch these problems before they get the chance to happen again.
Say what you will about Parkhurst or the quality of food that you receive on a daily basis, but they truly do care about the well-being of the students who have to eat their food and take all complaints incredibly seriously. It’s not their fault that many students are unhappy with the food, we just hate the routine of eating chicken fillets at the Capital Grill four times a week, even though they are delicious.
Despite these apologies from Parkhurst, I am still left with a feeling of uneasiness. I probably won’t go back to the salad bar again for a while, and when I finally do, I will pick through every individual leaf of lettuce before putting it on my plate.
I understand that this was an accident and an oversight, but it makes me think about what would have happened if I had not spotted the millipede in time.
Too often I am not closely inspecting my food before putting it in my mouth, and all too often I am eating things from The Main Event that I have never eaten before. Who knows if there has been a bug in my food in the past and I had just never noticed. Who knows how many other “oversights” have happened that were never caught. The truth is, I have no idea.
Whether I like it or not, I’m stuck eating in the MDR for the next semester and a half before I have the opportunity to live off-campus and off the meal plan.
I would like to ask Capital students to watch what you eat, and if you happen to find something make sure you report it so that it might not happen again.
