The University of New Haven has recently enforced their policy regarding catering from outside businesses, and student organizations are not happy about it.
Sodexo has first priority when it comes to catering meetings and events held by the various organizations on campus, meaning students must, by University policy, go through Sodexo to acquire any food items they may need instead of looking to an outside provider of food.
This policy has always been active, but as of recently, both the University and Sodexo have been cracking down on student organizations, enforcing these rules.
“No one was going through Sodexo, and they were losing money,” said Arnold Lane, USGA Chief of Senate.
The University of New Haven has a contract with Sodexo, which ensures that Sodexo would have first dibs when it comes to catering for any activity that happens on campus.
“The contract basically states that Sodexo is the University’s primary food provider and that all Recognized Student Organizations must go through them to get whatever they need,” said Lane.
“This policy came into light recently because OSA and USGA are trying to get every single RSO on the same page,” said Joshua Low, President of the International Students Association. “RSO E-Boards have gone through RSO training where we were informed of the University policies, forms and rules for running an organization on campus, since they will be enforced strictly from now on.”
This policy may be old, but it seems to be considered new amongst the organizations around campus. Many organizations did not know about this policy, and it has taken many of them by surprise.
“This policy gets in the way of just about every program that we do,” said Justin Bengtson, President of Sigma Alpha Epsilon.
The problem a lot of students are having with this “new” policy is simple enough to understand: Sodexo is overpriced and, often times, not worth it.
“Catering is expensive, I’ll admit that,” said Arnold Lane. “Student groups can get better quality food for cheaper prices off campus. Many of these groups don’t have the operating budget to support purchases from Sodexo.”
SAE is known to sell grilled cheeses to the campus for only $1, but now they are forced to raise the price to $4 in order to make the same profit while using Sodexo’s cheese products. “We know better than trying to sell $4 grilled cheese to a campus filled with broke college students,” said Bengtson.
There is only one exception to this rule: if the food a group needs cannot be provided by Sodexo, which is often the case for cultural food, a waiver can be filled out, and permission will be granted to go elsewhere for the food.
“We help plan many of the large cultural events on campus, including Diwali, Chinese New Year Celebration, Holiday Festival and the annual International Festival,” said Low. “Given the nature of the cuisine, most of the foods and drinks served at these events sometimes can’t be made by just anyone.”
Low continued to say that because of this newly enforced policy, the ISA has no choice but to go through Sodexo. And if Sodexo is certain they can make the cultural food, the organization has no choice but to order from them, whether the food turns out to be extremely expensive or the quality of the food is not good.
Another problem all organizations are having with this “new” policy is that, simply put, Sodexo food just is not that good.
“We’re constricted to using Sodexo food, which isn’t always ideal,” said Bengtson. “We had recruitment last semester, and since we’re not allowed to buy pizza from anywhere else, we had to go through Sodexo, and nobody [at the recruitment] wanted it.”
“Getting food for our events is almost always a hassle,” said Victoria Carnera, President of the Victimology Club. “There is paperwork to fill out in order to get the food, and now we can’t even run down to Shop Rite to get snacks for a club social.”
Carnera also added the one time the Victimology club did order food from Sodexo, the food was not ready on time. “The food from Sodexo isn’t even that good,” Carnera added.
