I think I have scurvy.
Not actually, of course, but with how my fruit consumption has plummeted these last two-ish months, I might as well. With every meal that comes to pass, I feel my gums grow a little bit weaker.
But how does an otherwise healthy 19-year-old run the risk of such a horrid disease? The answer lies in our dining halls’ blanket attempt at supplying those pesky micronutrients: melons.
So. Many. Melons.
Unless you’ve been living under a rock (or just off-campus), you’ve heard that Miami University has recently switched food providers for our dining halls. It’s all the rage on the parent Facebook chat and the scourge of every tour guide’s existence. Now, I don’t know if this switch has anything to do with the lack of fruit options, but it doesn’t change the fact that Miami would rather die than give us a berry.
Picture this: After living mostly off carbs and questionable chicken, you finally decide that maybe your body deserves fruit. You wander off to the fruit station – looking past the oily yogurt and what you hope is cottage cheese – and find three options, all in the form of cubes.
The first glistening square is pineapple, which I am unfortunately allergic to. The second is cantaloupe, a melon. The third cube is honeydew, which is also a melon but somehow worse than cantaloupe.
Never fear, you think, surely the dining hall will switch it up?!
Wrong. Our dining halls live and breathe tough-rinded fruit. In fact, every single dining hall has served almost exclusively melons every single time I have visited. I can’t escape them.
When complaining about this (in a very demure way) to someone, I was told to head to a market and buy my own berries if I craved them so badly. And sure, I could do that, if not for two little details: 1.) Berries are expensive. 2.) My meal plan is expensive.
Why should I, someone who is already dropping an absurd amount of money to eat at the dining hall, have to provide my own berries?
Let me give you some numbers since the dining services clearly won’t. Let’s say every first year is on the Diplomat Standard meal plan (the most popular one). That’s $3,184, multiplied by around 4,300 students, totaling roughly $13.7 million.
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That’s from just the first-year class. You’re telling me that there is no budget for strawberries in there? Not even a bushel of blueberries?
But wait! you might cry, the dining hall does serve other fruit! What about the bananas/apples/rare green grapes?
I barely want to dignify that with a response, but here you go. The bananas come exclusively in one of two ways: hard as a rock or literally rotting in the bowel. A couple of kids on my floor took the bananas back to the dorm to let them ripen, and they just didn’t. Even after two weeks, they were as green as when they were plucked from the tree.
To the apple defenders out there, I feel you. I too would love an apple. But dining hall apples are often what some would call plastic, and if I wanted to eat plastic, I would just gnaw on the chairs in my lecture hall.
And finally, to the green grapes, I truly have no notes. If you manage to survive the Hunger Games-esque battle for the coveted fruits, I truly commend you. But in my weeks at the dining hall a grape is hard to come by, which makes them almost irrelevant.
Despite what it sounds like, I’m not anti-dining hall. I understand the workers are trying their best. But sometimes a girl just needs to know that there will be a fruit other than melons out there. The cantaloupes’ and honeydews’ backs hurt from carrying the fruit table.
So while the extreme lack of any other fruit may be a slight (and I mean slight) exaggeration, consider this a formal request to Miami Dining Services for anything that ends in “-berry.” Your local scurvy victim would much appreciate it.
Parker Green is a first year English literature and strategic communications major. She’s a tour guide and member of several student organizations, including The Miami Student. When Parker isn’t doing academic or extracurricular work, you can usually find her reading or having a movie night with friends.
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