By Manuel Perez
J101 Student

The cafeteria on campus should offer a wider variety of meal options to students. 

The lack of variety forces students to go off campus to buy or bring their own food.

Currently, the menu lacks diversity in foreign cuisines. For example, there are no Spanish, Peruvian, Italian, Indian, Greek or French options at the campus cafeteria.

Nutritious meals like salmon, stir fry, avocado toast, oatmeal and vegetarian salads are also missing from the menu.

One great way to widen the variety of meal options for students is to cater for specific holidays.

For example, the week of Thanksgiving the cafeteria could serve turkey, mashed potatoes and stuffing while also keeping the original menu.

Another great way to ensure different meal options are available is to rotate the menu every two months.

Surprisingly only three Hispanic dishes are offered: burritos, quesadillas and tacos, with higher than normal prices.

Additionally, no Asian dishes are available, despite Asians and Hispanics being the majority demographic of Elac students.

Hispanics account for 66.19% of students and Asians account for 11.3% of students.

For Hispanic Heritage month, the cafeteria should serve different traditional staples of Hispanic Countries.

They should change the meal options to include two different staple cuisines each week for the entire month.

Some great meal options could be ceviche, tamales, empanadas, ropa vieja and asado.

During Asian, African American and Arab Heritage Month the campus should also serve their cultural dishes. 

Michael Carca, a sociology major, said he was frustrated with the lack of food variety in the campus cafeteria.

“There is not much food variety offered at the cafeteria, there’s chicken strips and burgers, the basics. We are majority minority students and they serve American food,” Carca said.

The cafeteria offers burgers and chicken sandwiches with different toppings.

Furthermore, the cafeteria serves Husky Favorites: Chicken & Waffles, Super Tender Rolls, Ali Beef Dog, Meal Deal, Crispy Tenders and Grilled Cheese.

Lastly, the cafeteria provides a Whole Farm Deli with healthy options including turkey vegetable sandwiches, tuna salad and more.

Because of the extremely limited food options on campus, Jesus Larios, a business major, finds himself going off campus to buy food more often than not.

“I prefer to buy food off campus like a majority of students here,” Larios said.

Incorporating a wider selection of meal options in the cafeteria could get more students, faculty and staff to eat on campus, increasing convenience for all.

Pacific Dining Food Service Management, the cafeteria food vendor, provides a tailored menu to their customers’ for private events. 

Because Pacific dining does tailor their food to customers, ELAC should let students vote for the meals they want on the regular menu.

Every two months or so a new survey should be done to ensure students are getting the meal variety they want.