My fellow burger-bitin’, cheese-chompin’, nugget-poppin’, ice cream-scoopin’ students…we have ourselves a problem! We forgot to feed the vegan! Yes the Vegan! That one friend that makes us feel like we’ve committed capital murder on Nemo or Chicken Little after we’ve stuffed our faces with sushi or a chicken sandwich. Yes, that vegan! But at least we get the chance to stuff our faces! I can’t say the same for the vegan students of GSU.
With a diet that excludes any and everything from animals, vegan students are finding it very hard to find food on campus each day. Vegan students like Taylor Pierce only get an hour for lunch and find it “hard to find something within that time and be able to eat it.” It is in my opinion that we provide more food options for Vegan students.
So why should you care? Short answer: because Vegans are people too! It’s not our business why someone is vegan and it doesn’t matter how feel about it. No one needs to know why you stuff your face with bacon cheeseburgers or egg sandwiches.
GSU EMBRACES diversity! We can see this not only in the diversity of the students but the food we eat. On any given weekday we have our choice of Mexican, Southern, Italian, and Chinese cuisine. But we can’t seem to embrace Vegans?! What’s up with that?
Too often I hear “but they have salads!” We’re not talking about rabbits here people! Besides who the heck would eat salads every day? On the GSU panther dining’s menu website I found that we omnivores have more than 100 food options at any given dining hall for dinner. That’s like 1,000 different mix and matches we could make to eat! On those same menus I found that Vegans have roughly 10 food options excluding the salad bar. 10! This is outrageous! Can you imagine having your choice of 10 food options a year?
Not to mention the options are merely “side” items such as rice pilaf, celery sticks, and wilted spinach. Who the heck wants wilted spinach?! No actual MEALS here people. But wait! You haven’t heard the worst part! Chicken noodle soup is on the vegan menu! Chicken! Freakin’ Noodle! Soup! If you can’t see what’s wrong with this picture stop reading my column and move on to the next one.
To top things off no vegan breakfast options are offered and barely any lunch options. I had to investigate this insanity closer and after speaking with staff at the Freshman Dining Hall I did find that there’s been a couple exciting things added to the vegan menu including veggie burgers and vegan tenders. While this is nice it is simply not enough. There are thousands of other Vegan dishes that could be whipped up quickly and won’t be costly.
Every student has the responsibility to let our school know about this problem. If not solely out of the good ol’ kindness of your heart then do it for that vegan girl you’ve wanted to ask out to eat but couldn’t because she’d be left staring at you stuff your face while she pushes salad around her plate. Do it for that classmate in your group that sits awkwardly playing with his pen while the rest of you guys discuss power points over pepperoni pizza. Feed the vegan!
*Note to ALL Vegans: I was informed my Mike Haun, manager of the freshman dining hall, that the grills can be cleaned at the request of the student for veggie burgers and grilled veggies! You can also have your food grilled in foil!
Great post!!! Vegans rock! 🙂