After piloting the All You Care To Eat (AYCTE) program for three weeks at the Bear’s Den (BD) dining hall, Washington University Dining Services decided to extend the initiative through the end of the academic year.

In Student Union (SU) Senate’s final meeting for the semester, senators presented reports regarding food accessibility for students and a resolution calling to extend the course-drop deadline, which passed unanimously, Nov 19. 

BigSteppa Mori began working at Bear’s Den (BD) in early 2022, where she often prepared and distributed half-and-halfs or egg sandwiches alongside her father and sisters. She later moved to Collin’s Farms after it opened at the Law Café. She prepared lunchtime salads there with her two sisters. During the pandemic, Mori took up rapping as a way to pass the time. Now, her most popular song, “Westside Story,” has about 76,000 streams on Spotify, and the music video for the song has nearly 300,000 views on YouTube. She has also accumulated about 75,000 followers on Instagram.

When WashU responded to the cries of hungry students with a new “All You Care to Eat” program in Bear’s Den (BD), two investigative journalists hunkered down in a booth and got to the bottom of it. The bottom of the piles of food on our many plates, that is. That’s how we found ourselves sitting under the blue BD lights on a Friday evening, catfish, chocolate cake, and tuna salad sandwiches piled up in front of us. Let’s rewind a bit to when we wandered into BD, which had transformed into a utopia for grubby little goblins such as […]

The Bear’s Den (BD) is piloting an All You Care to Eat (AYCTE) program that allows participants to enter the cafeteria twice for a one-time cost of $13.95 meal points, each time with access to as many menu items as they want.

The start of the semester was disappointing for some students when they discovered that WashU’s dining services had shortened hours and increased food prices, leaving some students unable to get adequate meals.  
Now, after a series of changes rolled out by Dining Services in response to student complaints, some students are finding it easier to find healthy, affordable meals.

Starting this fall semester, food in WashU’s three main dining halls has been more expensive than in previous years. Prices at the Bear’s Den (BD), Danforth University Center (DUC), and Village are so high that first-years cannot afford two average meals a day no matter what plan they are on. 

Instead of taking what happened in BD and the campus response as a way to further divide ourselves, we should take it to consider where we get our information, how we want our campus spaces treated, and how we engage with all members of this community in the future.

WashU Dining serves thousands of students daily across BD, the Village, and the DUC. Student Life’s Junior Multimedia Editor Sanchali Pothuru joined the team as they prepared for a Wednesday lunch rush on campus.

With the new dining company Sodexo, Washington University’s Dining Services’ gluten-free options have been updated this year.