Imagine settling into your Commons suite after a long day. You’re probably starving, but you’re not worried because you have all the ingredients to make your favorite home cooked meal. There’s only one problem: you don’t have a kitchen. With only a microwave and mini-fridge in your dorm, you can’t boil those potatoes before you mash them, you can’t bake the lasagna you just prepared. At least, not unless you beg your RA to borrow his or her heavy-duty appliances, because there’s no kitchen in the Commons residence hall for residents’ use. Why? We couldn’t tell you, but it sure would be nifty.
Why aren’t there kitchens in Commons suites? Or at least in each floors’ common rooms? The Goodwin residence hall, a dorm facility housing only freshmen, has a first floor kitchen with a full-size fridge, stove, microwave and oven. One would assume that upperclassmen, the majority population that the Commons accommodates, would be more likely to have a kitchen in their living quarters, but that isn’t the case at NSU.
Transitioning from home-cooked meals to average, on-campus dining options can be frustrating for students.
NSU ensures students are prepared with food funds by requiring them to select a meal plan at the start of each semester, costing $1,450, as stated in NSU’s 2015-2016 On-Campus Living Catalog.
According to a College Board survey, the average price of a meal with a college meal plan is anywhere from $7-$11. While there are various options to choose from, who says we want to spend a whopping $7-$11 on a burger and fries, soup and salad or smoothie and wrap up to three times a day? What about the students that need to eat more? What happens when the meal plan funds run dry? Isn’t our next viable option to purchase groceries in an effort to save money?
With no place to cook our groceries, we’re forced to eat on or off campus. As college students, we are very cautious about how we spend our money, and eating on campus, or off, can get expensive. Fifty dollars on groceries can produce a lot more meals than the four to five we would be able to get from campus dining or outside restaurants for that same amount.
If we had the appliances to bake our own chicken and cook our own burgers, we would save quite a bit of money, not to mention our taste buds. Even though residential students receive a meal plan, the options on campus, when eaten consistently, can become repetitive, boring and quite unhealthy.
A study conducted in 2012 by Auburn University “followed 131 students over four years of college and found that a whopping 70 percent of them packed on pounds by graduation.”
Because these students didn’t have the essentials they needed to create healthy home-cooked meals and had to eat out almost every night, they ended up gaining an average of 12-37 pounds a year, according to the Auburn University study.
Additionally, when choosing which university we want to attend, we often search for a place that can provide comfort. Part of being comfortable is being able to bond with those we have to share a dorm or suite with. With kitchens, students would be able to make meals with their roommates or suitemates. While they can obviously heat up a few hotdogs in the microwave, Commons residents don’t have the opportunity to converse and get to know one another while baking a cake or preparing a homemade meal.
NSU is supposed to serve as a student’s home away from home. A kitchen makes a place a home in a lot of ways. It allows students to have healthier options, save money and enhance relationships. So, should there be kitchens in the Commons residence hall? We say yes.
