Dining Services is currently soliciting names for the new food stations on the South 40, including the servery and new Bear Mart shown in this rendering. (Courtesy of WUSTL Dining Services)

Fascinated by nomenclature? How about food? Fame? Glory? Dining Services is offering Wash. U. students and the surrounding community the opportunity to name next year’s dining options at the new South 40 House.

This process includes two rounds, the first of which is currently open. Anyone can fill out a survey and submit ideas for the names of many stations, opening in August 2010. Stations up for naming are the new Bear Mart and the new food options, including but not limited to the bakery and sandwich station, taqueria, pizza and pasta station, grill station, kosher option, Mongolian grill, Tandoori oven and servery.

On March 19, the committee in charge of choosing names will convene to discuss the suggestions received. The committee members will then start the second round by making a second survey, including their favorite suggestions from the first round in addition to another write-in option in case anyone comes up with any new ideas.

Resident District Manager Nadeem Siddiqui said that the committee first discussed having a theme that people should follow, but then decided that the names submitted can be completely open. The committee decided that students should not be forced to stick to a certain category or pattern, such as “Bear’s ___,” or name stations based on the food being sold.

“Right now, in the first round, it’s just absolutely anything that people want to offer as a suggestion,” Siddiqui said. “We decided in the end we’re going to just try to gauge the interest in ideas of the students, and that will be the starting point.”

Paul Schimmele, assistant to the director of operations, urges students to submit any name.

“I’m just hoping for a lot of good suggestions,” Schimmele said.

Siddiqui believes that students’ incentive to participate is that if their idea is chosen, the station will forever have the name they want it to have.

“It will be there forever, and if they come back as an alum, they can say they chose the name,” Siddiqui said.

Dining Services believes that the naming process is going well so far, with more than 100 forms already submitted before spring break.

Dining Services hopes to decide the station names by the beginning of April. This way, officials can pass this information on to the architects so that they can then figure out how to place the titles at each station.

According to Siddiqui and Schimmele, one name that has already been submitted in the survey—and shows that many students have strong opinions about it—is “Bear’s Den.”

“I’ve been hearing, ‘I have to have my Bear’s Den,’ so I’m sure—well I know for a fact—that that’s one of the names that has been written in,” Schimmele said.

He continued to explain how the name is very important to some students who have “very strong connections to [Bear’s Den]” and that Bear’s Den is “very important to them.” But he also mentioned that there are many new students who don’t even know Bear’s Den.

Students can fill out the form online by going to http://diningservices.wustl.edu/name_it.asp, or they can print out a form and drop it off at Bear’s Grill and the Village Café.

Students line up at the village stiry-fry line at dinner time. The village now offers stir-fry until 9 p.m on school nights. (Matt Lanter | Student Life)

The change, which was initiated with the beginning of the semester, initially started off slowly.

To make people more aware of the new hours, Student Union is creating a raffle.

Buy food during the new hours and enter your name into a raffle for gift certificates to places such as Best Buy and the campus bookstore. Each student can only be entered once. There will be five winners.

Student Union is paying for the prizes with fundraising money they raised themselves.

“The raffle is just an added bonus for students to take advantage of extended hours,” Vice President of Public Relations Morgan DeBaun said. “I think it will benefit students that we have these later hours but I think this incentive will make people recognize that it’s an improvement.”

Some students are unaware of the extended hours, and the raffle is designed to combat this.

“I think the raffle is a fantastic idea because most people are unaware of the hours,” said sophomore Thomas Roach, a Lopata House resident. “They’ve heard of them being introduced, but don’t know they’ve been implemented. When I tell them there are extra hours, I get looks of disbelief. And everyone loves raffles.”

Many think that those who weren’t involved with implementation of the change aren’t aware of it.

“The [students] who fought for it are the ones who are going to use it most,” said sophomore Lexi Klein, who lives on the South 40.

DeBaun said, “I don’t know if it’s going to get people. They’re not going to be that excited about the prize but it’s more we’re going to be promoting the extended hours, and this is an added incentive. The first week of the pilot was slower than expected with fewer people coming to extended hours. However, as time went on there was a significant increase in the volume of people eating during the new hours.

“At this point we’re very happy how it’s going,” said Jill Duncan, the director of marketing for Dining Services.

The hours were chosen after a series of surveys and interviews with students to find out exactly what they wanted and what times would work best.

“The goal was to address needs of students wanting late-night dining options,” Duncan said.

Dining Services has been working with Student Union to set up the raffle.

“I definitely do think SU is very good at promoting these types of things to the students, and we’re definitely supportive and will support it any way we can,” Duncan said.

Bon Appétit Resident District Manager Nadeem Siddiqui is optimistic about the extended hours.

“We need to run the pilot program and keep a close eye and review data with [the] Student Union and University,” he said. “My hope is that the program continues, and I am very proud of our team in making this a success. We need to continue to receive feedback as how we can improve. So far it has received good reviews”.

Siddiqui said that the program is currently covering the cost of keeping the Village dinning area open later.

The village now offers stir-fry until 9 p.m. (an hour later than

before) and the grill is open until 2 a.m. on weekends (extended from midnight). At night, it is host to a number of breakfast and comfort foods like chicken, waffles, eggs and bacon.

“I haven’t been hungry late at night, but I do think [the extended hours] are a great idea,” junior David Kajander said.

He said he would probably use the extended hours later in the year.

Dining Services will have conclusive results about the success of the pilot after the first six weeks of the program.

The raffle will start on Monday and continue through the week before spring break.

“Who doesn’t love a chance to get something free?” Duncan said.

If Hilltop Bakery (right) closes in the fall, Subway (left) may move to the space in Mallinckrodt Center currently occupied by the eatery. (Matt Mitgang | Student Life)

If all goes as planned, $5 footlongs are set to hit Mallinckrodt Center next fall. Loren Grossman, owner of the Subway restaurant on campus, is currently in discussions with Washington University to take over the space that would be vacated by Hilltop Bakery.

“We haven’t decided [the move of Subway to Hilltop] yet,” Associate Vice Chancellor for Operations Steve Hoffner said. “We are in discussions with Subway to see about them possibly moving upstairs.”

Subway has occupied its current space in the Rathskellar (the Rat), in the basement of Umrath Hall, since 2003. Subway first opened in Mallinckrodt Center’s food court in 1995.

Grossman said the current space has proven to be too small for the volume of customers that Subway gets, leading him to desire a new location.

“We’ve outgrown this space, and the space is kind of inadequate to what we need and that space has become available,” Grossman said.

Hoffner echoed Grossman’s sentiments. Mallinckrodt Center would “[give] them more space and better space and a more prominent location,” he said.

Grossman highlighted long lines as an issue, for they turn prospective customers away.

“When the University made the possibility of that space [in Mallinckrodt] available to me, I was very happy because I never like to see a line…sometimes I’ll come here and I’ll see people looking down the stairway and walking away because they don’t want to stand in line,” Grossman said.

The new space would allow Subway to serve its customers with increased speed and efficiency. In addition, the quantity of seating would not decrease.

“I think it [the new location] would allow us to better serve our customers,” Grossman said. “We’re going to be able to put a double serving line in the new space. The seating probably will remain about the same. Of course, there’s a large terrace, which means that will be much additional seating outside.”

Hilltop Bakery, an eatery that is popular among the student body, offers custom-made wraps and salads. Grossman hopes to meet the needs of former Hilltop customers by promoting Subway’s salads and its wide variety of menu items.

According to Hoffner, Hilltop continues to be profitable and Dining Services will move as many Hilltop options as possible to the Danforth University Center (DUC). Additionally, student input will be sought out to determine what options to keep.

Even with the high cost of moving and expanding, Grossman expects prices to remain stable.

“We don’t expect prices to increase,” Grossman said. “We have always, [but] we’re not required to…follow the prices that Subway recommends for the region. It is my intention to keep it that way.”

As for the Rat, there are no plans for that space right now. But Hoffner said that it would not house an additional dining facility.

Grossman hopes that the contract will be finalized within the next month. The new space vacated by Hilltop Bakery would become available to Grossman after Commencement in May.

Wash. U.’s Dining Services has managed to come up with some positive news for the new semester: better hours at the Village. The stir-fry station’s hours have been extended from 8 p.m. to 9 p.m., Sunday through Thursday, and the Village Grill is open until 2 a.m. on Friday and Saturday evenings. With the later closing times comes a larger variety of items; students, for example, can now purchase breakfast items late at night at the Village. On the South 40, new menu items such as spring rolls and an improved turkey burger are now available, and calzones have debuted at the DUC.

Our pens and stomachs have nothing but praise for this good news. The announcement means flaming stir-fried vegetables, rice and meat for a late dinner. It means a Philly cheesesteak sandwich and tater tots between parties on Frat Row. And it’s worth noting that the later hours help narrow the clear divide between food service for underclassmen on the South 40 and service for upperclassmen on the North Side. We want to commend Bon Appétit and Student Union—particularly Greg Schweizer, the former chair of the Senate Campus Services committee, who led the drive for extended hours—for listening to students. We asked for better hours, and they have accommodated.

We realize the new hours aren’t wholly beneficial. Students can no longer grab dinner at Trattoria Verde or DeliciOSO at the DUC after 8 p.m. on Friday, though they were previously open until 8:30. More importantly, the Village chefs and other employees must work later hours. We ask that Wash. U. students keep in mind what these workers are giving up to keep the place open.

The fact that Bon Appétit is willing to make these changes shows its willingness to listen. The company-wide tomato controversy not withstanding, Nadeem Siddiqui, Paul Schimmele and the entire Bon Appétit management team have consistently demonstrated attention to students’ wishes. Following a forum held last semester, in which students voiced their opinions directly to Dining Services officials, Bon Appétit enacted a gratifying number of changes. When the eateries on the South 40 didn’t live up to students’ expectations, Bon Appétit stepped in with old favorites and a faster ordering system. When undergraduates decided Companion bagels were inferior to ones from Einstein Bros., Bon Appétit reintroduced the latter at Whispers Café.

True, these reforms took a lot of time to implement, and the new Village hours are simply a pilot program. Nevertheless, they have happened, and for that, Bon Appétit—especially its employees who have committed to serving students’ needs—deserves the student body’s gratitude.

I’m relieved to see finally the Wash. U. sustainability plan, but it isn’t good enough. I appreciate the administration’s efforts to adopt broad policies that will help reduce the University’s impact on nature. The fact that our university acknowledges the serious threat climate change poses to the nation’s natural resources (which is probably more than coal and energy executives on its board are willing to admit) is refreshing. But the sustainability plan as it is now is sadly incomplete; it will never achieve its full potential without a serious commitment to educating Wash. U. students, faculty and staff on making responsible choices that will protect our natural surroundings.

The draft plan has numerous positive initiatives. One is single-stream recycling, which I love. Now you can dump anything except food, liquids, Styrofoam and tissues into any Wash. U. recycling bin; recycling on campus is now faster, easier better. The University has held strong in its commitment to eliminate coal as an energy source for steam generation. LEED-certified buildings will help mitigate the effects of the never-ending construction on campus.

Yet as always, beauty is only skin deep. I’m willing to bet that most students don’t know that they can recycle potato chip bags, or wash out and recycle the brown food boxes, which means recyclable waste still ends up in landfills. Ameren UE is still St. Louis’ main electricity provider, and it generates most of its electricity from burning dirty coal. I’m sure Wash. U. participates in Ameren’s PURE (People Using Renewable Energy) Power program, but the St. Louis Post-Dispatch recently reported that less than half of the extra fee for participating goes toward renewable energy credits, which may support out-of-state projects. Most of the fee goes toward marketing costs and profit.

So what can be done to make the sustainability plan better? For the University administration, promise to reduce the amount of new construction and to fight for cleaner energy sources.  I realize Missouri has a pathetic renewable energy infrastructure, but Wash. U. is in a unique position (particularly with an Ameren executive on its board) to demand more. Also, the Tyson Research Center powers itself exclusively through solar power—if solar energy works for the Tyson Center, why not experiment with solar panels on a residential hall or classroom building? Finally, I like my colleague Brent Sherman’s thoughts on building metering. I’d be open to the University reducing room and board costs but then metering and charging rooms and suites individually, incentivizing energy-conscious actions.

For Dining Services, commit to better information on food sources and impacts. Many students may know our bananas are Fair Trade Certified, but do they also know at least some are shipped from Colombia, over 2,000 miles away? Was my lunch grown in the rice fields of Arkansas or Vietnam? A great system would organize menu items into low-carbon (green), medium-carbon (yellow) and high-carbon (red) choices.

And for everyone, focus on a greater awareness of our actions and their impact on our surroundings, so that “I didn’t know” is never an excuse. Probably the best idea I have seen in my year and a half at Wash. U. are the color-coded “Landfill” and “Recycling” stickers on trashcans and recycling bins. They instantly educate you on what effect your throwing away an item has on the world around you. There should be red stickers saying “Coal-powered” above every light switch, or a picture of Hugo Chavez and an oil field next to each television. There should be stickers on washing machines labeling the hot and warm cycles as wasteful. With these and other steps, everyone in the Wash. U. community would be better educated and prepared to make a difference in college and beyond.

The result on campus? Only grape tomatoes for now. We asked students, “What do you think?”

The human rights crisis in Florida’s fields is urgent and appalling. Conditions range from poverty wages to extremes of forced labor. The Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW), a Florida-based farmworker organization, has assisted the Department of Justice in the prosecution of six farm labor slavery cases involving more than 1,000 workers since 1997—cases where workers have been chained, beaten, pistol-whipped, raped, and forced to pick tomatoes and other crops against their will for little or no pay.

The CIW’s Campaign for Fair Food represents the best systemic hope for eliminating modern-day slavery in Florida’s tomato fields by raising the harvesting wage floor and institutionalizing a voice for farm workers. The campaign has won unprecedented support for fundamental farm labor reforms from retail food industry leaders such as Bon Appétit with the goal of enlisting the market power of those companies to demand more humane labor standards from their Florida tomato suppliers, and deserves credit for taking such a clear stand against exploitation in its tomato supply chain.

Neatly sidestepping the moral issues associated with eating food potentially harvested by slaves, Markel responds with two faulty claims. First, he contends that the Campaign for Fair Food will dramatically increase food prices for consumers. A simple thought experiment debunks this hypothesis since a typical hamburger is served with less than a 10th of a pound of tomato. Accordingly, fairer wages for tomato pickers achieved through the campaign cost retailers such as Bon Appétit a negligible 10th of a penny per burger. Harvesters receive such a paltry share of the final retail price of a tomato that one could literally double their wages without affecting the price of a menu item by a single cent.

Second, Markel advances a patently false concern for the job security of tomato pickers themselves. Despite his implication to the contrary, farm workers are not foolish or childlike; they are capable of developing intelligent strategies to improve their livelihoods. Fortunately, we do not have to sit back and simply guess about the effects of the campaign in this realm. Over the past nine years—a period of time that has yielded agreements between the CIW and seven multibillion-dollar, multinational food retailers—not a single tomato picker has lost his or her job as a result of the CIW’s efforts.

Markel tries to pass off fantastic speculation about cause-and-effect relationships as the reasoned analysis of a business student. Perhaps he could have made up for his apparent lack of research with some basic truth telling: He simply does not want to have his menu options limited by basic issues of slavery and freedom.

I don’t like people to have bad working conditions. It makes them feel unhappy and lowers their productivity. However it is completely wrong to think, as many have been led to believe, that boycotting firms that don’t provide stellar working conditions is the best way to go about helping the workers. It’s quite the opposite actually: If you stop funding a company’s operations, in the short-run upper management will have to cut back on operations. How do they go about doing this? They fire workers. If you’re a laborer who has just landed a job on a farm paying a minimal wage and you intend to send money home to care for your family, getting fired would be pretty bad. Yet, when your company is being boycotted, that’s exactly what will happen.

Sweatshop labor is not ideal. It’s not even good. In fact, it’s pretty lousy. However the most important fact to realize is that a bad job with poor working conditions is, for destitute immigrant workers, far better than being stuck without a job and no source of income. In reality, Bon Appétit is hurting the workers it claims to be siding with.

I think that both the general public and the Washington University community should question the motives of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, as well as those of the group’s supporters. The CIW is trying to lure tomato farmers onto their program of supposedly “fair” wages and labor practices. Twelve lines of MacBeth will remind you: “Fair is foul, and foul is fair.” Perhaps Shakespeare wasn’t speaking directly about tomato cartels, but the skepticism about supposed intentions is relevant nonetheless. Under the misleading guise of an “anti-slavery” campaign, the CIW is trying to get farms to sign on to their plan that will supposedly improve labor conditions.

The issue most relevant to the tomato debate is not labor. It’s the resulting price increases on food that come with the CIW’s plan. By imposing excessive conditions on farms, production costs will rise significantly. This in turn translates into a price increase. For every produce farm that signs on to the CIW’s scheme, the price of food will go up a little bit more. What about the poorest workers now out of a job? They can’t afford the more expensive food. The CIW seems counterintuitive, no?

To sum it up, Bon Appétit’s supporting the Coalition of Immokalee workers will have two results. Their cessation of tomato purchases will force farms lay off workers. In addition, Bon Appétit putting its weight behind the absurd premises of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers will give the movement more momentum, absorbing more farms into the mix and raising the prices of food. Before buying into the ridiculous “anti-slavery” story and supporting a tomato boycott, you should ask yourself: In a weak economy, do we really want to put people out of work, cut the food supply, and raise the prices of essential produce? I personally think that cutting jobs and raising prices on food is a deplorable idea. You, however, should make up your own mind.

Richard is a junior in Business. He can be reached via e-mail at richard.markel@gmail.com.

Created last year by sophomore Rebecca Hunter, the BBC is an interest group that advocates for students with dietary restrictions, primarily vegans and vegetarians. While unique in the sense that most communication within the club occurs on Facebook instead of in meetings, the club does host numerous events for its members, centered on food and culinary education.

“[The club] just had an event where we had a chef’s table [at the Village],” Hunter said. “We were sitting in the back of the Village kitchen, and we were having dinner, where the chefs made different dishes that we tried out, and they talked to us about what we thought.”

The informal conversation between the BBC and Wash. U.’s chefs is an essential part of the club’s mission, which is to bring more healthy eating options, especially those that are meat-free, to campus. The main purpose of the club is to allow members to make comments and suggestions about the eating arrangements offered to Hunter.

She then takes these comments to available chefs, or more specifically to Nadeem Siddiqui, the resident district manager for Bon Appétit.

“A lot of it is people will post quotes on the [Facebook] wall, or they’ll shoot me an e-mail and say, ‘Oh, I have a suggestion.’ I’ll give it to Nadeem Siddiqui and say, ‘We have these awesome ideas…could we see more of this?’” Hunter said.

The dining staff takes these suggestions seriously, Hunter said, and many have already been implemented, such as an increase in the offerings of potatoes and green vegetables. Such changes are good for everybody wishing to partake in a healthier diet, which is just what the club works toward. In addition, Hunter emphasized that “meat eaters” are indeed welcome to join the club if they have an interest.

“We really try to appeal to everybody. We don’t preach either way—be what you want to be,” Hunter said. “If you have more options, the better it is for everyone. We just want people to be able to eat, enjoy their food and be happy and healthy.”

Referring to the educational aspect of the BBC’s events, Hunter said, “We want people to learn how to feed themselves after college if they want to continue being healthy. It’s also an aspect of ‘You are a vegetarian, now what do you do?’”

Recipe options, what to buy food-wise at the grocery store, and how one can explore the options on campus and make changes are all topics addressed by the interest group.

If you are interested in joining, simply look up “BlackBean Burger Club” on Facebook, where you will find the group’s main page.

“The main goal [of the club] is that there are no hungry vegetarians on campus and that everyone else is eating healthy as well,” Hunter said. “We’ll get there.”

Student Union passed two resolutions Wednesday, one in support of student activism at Monday’s student protest of the University’s energy conference and another recommending that the Village extend its dining hours. Left, SU Senator Greg Schweizer urges Senate to pass the dining resolution and stir-fry, pending the approval of Bon Appétit management, right. (Matt Langer (center) and Matt Mitgang | Student Life)

Student Union Senate voted unanimously on Wednesday to pass a resolution to pilot extended dining hours in the Village. One of the main issues under discussion in the resolution is whether SU will compensate Bon Appétit for any monetary losses incurred as a result of the pilot.

Although most eateries on the South 40 are open until 3 a.m. on weekends, all food stations in the Village close at 8 p.m. except the grill station, which closes at midnight. One of the popular food services in the Village that closes at 8 p.m. is the stir-fry station.

In a recent SU survey, more than 55 percent of students and an average of 85 percent of North Side residents said they would likely purchase food from the Village between midnight and 2 a.m. on Friday and Saturday. The survey also found that a majority of students supported extending dining hours for both the grill and stir-fry stations.

The SU resolution called for an extension of hours at the grill, which the resolution recommended stay open until 2 a.m. on Fridays and Saturdays for a seven-week trial period. The resolution also recommended that the stir-fry station be open until 9 p.m. on Sunday through Thursday for the trial period.

If Bon Appétit agrees with the recommendations, the pilot will run from the beginning of spring semester until spring break.

According to junior Greg Schweizer, outgoing chair of the Senate Campus Services committee and the SU Senator who has led the effort to extend Village dining hours, the main concern with the pilot is that Bon Appétit will lose money.

Several plans have been proposed to offset any monetary losses, including having SU subsidize the program. In the event that SU does this, the money would come from the student activities fee. This subsidization would last only for the extent of the trial period.

“The subsidy would be a last resort, but we are confident that they will recoup the money,” Schweizer said.

Nadeem Siddiqui, Bon Appétit’s resident district manager, said a Student Union subsidy is undesirable.

“The goal is that we don’t have to or shouldn’t have to do that,” Siddiqui said.

Bon Appétit also has the option of pulling out of the pilot at any point.

If at the end of the seven-week trial, Bon Appétit loses money but still wants to make the extended hours permanent, another option is for the organization to cut hours at other dining facilities on campus. Low-volume hours could be cut from campus eateries such as Whispers to fund an increase in hours at the Village.

Schweizer is optimistic about the extended hours at the Village.

“My expectation is that the pilot will be a success,” Schweizer said. “I think that come next year, there will be later hours in the Village.”

Sophomore Michael Laks said he would like extended hours. Laks often treks to the Village from the South 40 for stir-fry. Last week he waited a half hour for it.

“The hours should go longer because it’s so delicious,” Laks said. “Stir-fry should be available to students at all times of the day. It’s not the rare occasion that I need my fix of sesame and soy and the stir-fry station is closed.”

Freshman Tyler Trussell would also like extended hours.

“[The time the Village eateries close] seems kind of early. I usually don’t eat dinner until 8:30 or 9,” Trussell said.