Of all dining spots on campus, Bridgeway Stations is the only one consistently open for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Served buffet-style, the pull of all-you-can-eat soft serve and cookies draws in hundreds of students a day. Dining Services, however, seems bent on poisoning its student body via undercooked food and expanding its carbon footprint as rapidly as possible with disposable silverware.
Bridgeway cuisine is notorious for contributing to student indigestion. Jokes about employees lacing food with laxatives are very common on campus, and much of the student body will substantiate this claim. This consistently questionable food standard has been prevalent from semester to semester, year to year.
Many find the dining experience at Bridgeway to be subpar in matters of flavor and variety. Raw chicken is a common encounter, and when it is fully cooked, students find it to be bland. Spices and hot sauces were finally added this year. New menu items, however, are few and far between. The same pizza, pasta and unwashed vegetables are available every day. As they state themselves, “Dining Services tries to minimize the range of ingredients used across dishes to maximize cross-utilization of ingredients.”
Many students with dietary restrictions have vocalized problems when trying to order. Signage states that Bridgeway will offer foods to fit these dietary restrictions, but when students request them, they’re often told that the options aren’t available.
With the campus’s environmental push, the OZZI tokens and containers being an example, it’s disheartening to see the plastic cutlery still present at Bridgeway. For the first week of classes, plastic cutlery was the only option, leading to a massive amount of single-use plastic waste from students and visiting parents. Food waste is also prevalent as the campus does not allow extra food to be taken home or donated.
The webpage for dining services is out of date and downright misleading. Bridgeway Stations boasts “breakfast bar, pizza station, wok and grill stations, home-style station, deli bar, salad bar and build-your-own stir fry station.” While this may have been true in years past, food variety has since diminished.
Sitting at 3.2 stars on Google reviews, it’s apparent that students and community alike have adverse experiences with Bridgeway cuisine. With the lack of flavor, variety and food that won’t upset your stomach, it’s no wonder that many students opt to eat at Haus or GWAM instead.
