St. Bonaventure's Hickey Dining Hall

St. Bonaventure University is a private educational institution founded in 1858. The University is located in St. Bonaventure, NY and in a rural setting, the campus size is 500 acres. The school holds about 2,100 undergraduate and graduate students. As of 2019, St. Bonaventure is ranked number twenty two in Regional Universities North. In athletics, the St. Bonaventure Bonnies play National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division 1 sports in the Atlantic 10 Conference.

As a second semester freshman, I have come to love St. Bonaventure University, the students, and the professors. When I first stepped foot on campus, it was probably one of the scariest experiences of my life. I didn’t know what to expect, if I would make friends, or if I would even fit in. Words couldn’t describe how bad I wanted to go home when my mom and little sister left after the candle light service. I was homesick for months, but as I made finds, I became less and less homesick. In my short months here, I learned and experienced so many things I wouldn’t have had if I was back home. I learned to be independent and make my own decisions. However, with that, came many consequences. This may be a small, but eating at the hickey is one of those consequences.

The Hickey Dining Hall is one of the 7 dining services on campus. On Monday through Friday there hours range from 7:00am to 11:00pm and on Saturday through Sunday there hours range from 9:00am to 11:00pm. According to the dining halls website, the Hickey is “a place where you enjoy traditional American cuisine, authentic ethnic dishes, healthy options, five star meals and monthly specials including festive theme meals…” Which is a LIE. The hickey is none of those things listed on their website and I’m almost 95% sure every student on campus would agree with me. For those who wish to eat healthy, the only option they have is to eat a salad. Other than that, you’re eating fattening, unseasoned, 1 star meals. There is rarely a time when someone could actually say they enjoyed a meal at the dining hall.

In my experiences, at first I didn’t care what I ate because the only foods I felt like eating was pizza, burgers, hotdogs, and fries. As the semester went on my clothes became tighter, my stomach began to hang, and my face got chunkier. I gained about 10 pounds within a month of being at the University. This semester, I became disappointed in myself because of my eating habits. I gained a tremendous amount of weight and was not going to the gym. So when I decided I was going to eat healthy and hit the gym, I realized there were no healthy options in the Hickey besides a salad or sometimes the Homezone. Salad isn’t filling, so I’d eat and 10 minutes later, I’d be hungry again. This is one of the many reasons why St. Bonaventure needs to come up with a way to serve better and nutritional foods for all to eat. For those who don’t care about gaining weight, there should be more options rather than just pizza, burgers, hotdogs, and fries. It isn’t right that there is only a wide variety of choices when there is an open house. I know when I came here they fooled me with a whole bunch of food. For the upcoming semester, there should be a survey of the types of foods people would like to see in the Hickey. There should be a station in each part of the food section in the Hickey. Each station should change every week based on what the students want. It could be a section for vegans and vegetarians, one of cultural foods like Hispanic, Chinese, Mediterranean, even Haitian food. Another could have the traditional American food, and the Homezone can stay because I see a lot of people stand in line for that. For all the money we spend a semester on food depending on our meal plans, we should at least enjoy the food we intake and get a choice on what should be served. It’s only fair.