Sundays at Sodexo

 Despite the constant gripes and whining from most students, Sodexo is actually pretty good. Students are provided with a constantly changing menu, a wide variety of food to choose from at each meal and consistently friendly service.

However, there’s one little thing Sodexo does that is bothersome. Sodexo does not serve breakfast on Sundays.

This situation is puzzling, as many students attend the local churches on Sunday and the vast majority of those churches hold services in the morning, usually at some point between 8 a.m. and noon.

Sunday brunch from Sodexo does not begin until noon, so unless churchgoing students have breakfast food in their dorm rooms or manage to smuggle a bagel out of the Dining Commons at some point during the week, they are out of luck when it comes to getting a meal before services start.

Given the fact that Eastern is a Christian university, one would expect the school to actively encourage students to get up early and attend church. One of the best ways to do this would be to provide students with a full, hearty breakfast before they leave for church.

Sodexo seems to ignore this concern, which in turn appears to encourage students to stay in bed Sunday morning and wait until brunch to venture out of their rooms.

The current full meal plan provides students with twenty meals a week: breakfast, lunch, and dinner Monday through Saturday, and brunch and dinner on Sundays.

Why not add another meal to the plan? Granted it would make the plan more expensive, but not enough so that the cost would become prohibitive to students.

Should the addition of a meal to the plan indeed prove too expensive, then Sodexo should consider switching brunch to Saturdays and offer three meals on Sundays instead.

A good majority of students sleep through breakfast on Saturdays. The hallways, lounges and bathrooms in the dormitories are all but deserted Saturday mornings as most students choose to sleep in after staying up late Friday nights.

Why serve a meal at a time when virtually no one is awake?

Most students would probably look forward to brunch being on Saturdays so they could have breakfast on Sundays before church, not to mention eat a meal that they’ve already paid for, rather than let it go to waste.