Point Park University should create a more secure environment for being able to access food. Students are forced to rely on the school’s dining services or go through ordering their own groceries when financially unstable due to attending a private, liberal arts university. 

Every university will have its flaws. It is necessary to listen to students about changes which occur when there are other concerns at the forefront of the college. Painting the Café and creating a food ordering system which relies on technology is not the most efficient way of trying to create a more friendly environment for students. 

The emails which are sent from Boost are inaccurate at best. Even if they say the food is ready to be picked up, people are still left waiting until their meal is placed in a cubby. The self check-out is better than waiting in 30 person lines, but there are usually crowds of students waiting on their phones to be able to receive their food. 

I have heard multiple testimonies that during the first two weeks of school there were people who could not access their flex dollars or meal swipes altogether. This is mainly worrisome to freshman or upperclassmen who live in Lawrence Hall, Thayer Hall, or Conestoga, as no one in those apartments have access to a full kitchen. The fact that there was the possibility of Boost not occurring without a hitch should have happened before the start of the fall semester. 

Within the first month of being back on campus, there is already an issue with the meal equivalency. A junior COPA student said that it is currently eight dollars, but it takes nine to get a half-filling salad with three toppings. 

There should be more communication about the funding which was allocated to revamp Point Café. It is not the first priority of the actions which should be taken on campus. There should be initiatives of having more than one gender neutral bathroom per building, upholstered diversity training for faculty and staff, or additional advertisements of organizations and groups on campus which tend to be not well-represented. 

As for the plates disappearing in the dining hall, I personally commend whoever is dedicated enough to rob an entire university of 953 plates. I do not see why this should happen at all, but either it is a large class prank brought to us by the class of 2026 or someone is extremely methodically just stealing the dining hall plates. I would recommend, however, if you are housing 953 plates in Lawrence Hall right now that you actually give them to your Resident Educator’s before fall break, because with the humidity they will begin to become gross. 

Additionally, if you are the person who posted the plate tear-off sheet in Academic Hall, you single-handedly fueled my serotonin for the week, and I haven’t even seen this in person. Whatever is happening would not be possible at any other school, and this is why Point Park University has the reputation of having a creative, diligent, and respectful student body.