<p>I was at Brown to pick up my daughter from the summer program and have a few questions about the superficial parts of the campus. Is the food always that bad? I have eaten in the caf twice - once when we toured during the school year; and once when I dropped her off about a month ago. Both times I was disappointed with veggie options and thought it would grow old fast after a few weeks. Second, is the gym really not air conditioned? Does this bother anyone during the school year or just in the hot summer. Just curious. Thanks.</p>
<p>yes the food is always that bad</p>
<p>lack of AC is only a problem the first few weeks of fall semester and possibly last few weeks of spring semester- and the summer</p>
<p>No no, the food is NOT always that bad. During the summer, the only places open are the VW and Jo's (which is turned into an all you can eat facility). The Ratty has much better vegetarian options, including a much better salad bar and an entire line call Roots and Shoots that has vegan and vegetarian options. In addition, there is a late night snack bar, the Ivy Room, that is entirely vegetarian, with awesome falafel wraps and smoothies. Summer food is extremely repetitive.</p>
<p>Rabo is correct.</p>
<p>Food aint great though. Definitely better than many places...but not great. Not enough to deter you from Brown, but certainly something to **** and moan about...at least me :)</p>
<p>so if everyone *****es about the food and it's pretty well known the food isn't that great....WHY don't they RESOLVE the problem?</p>
<p>They are constantly updating and improving the retail and dining facilities. The Gate is getting redone this summer, we opened the Friedman Study center cart last semester, the Ratty was redone last summer (although that had more to do with the physical space rather than the food), the Ivy Room had freshens added last year, and a number of improvements this year including a new array of packaged items, soups, and nachos, the chefs spend the summer trying out and costing new recipes. </p>
<p>The thing is, as long as we don't grow our own food (as in Cornell), we will never have food that's as good as the food you will get at home, but it's a lot better than people are making it out to be. For instance, most schools make hamburgers out of frozen patties while ours are ground from higher quality beef in the Ratty butcher shop. The people who complain most often about the food are the ones who eat at the same place every day, eat the same thing every day, and don't ever try to get creative in the Ratty. </p>
<p>For the record, I'm off meal plan, but since I still eat most of my meals courtesy of Brown Dining due to work, I feel inclined to defend it. Believe it or not, there is CONSTANT work being done on the quality of the food and customer service in all of the dining facilities on campus.</p>
<p>I occasionally complain about the Ratty, but I shutter to think of what it must have been like before 2004, when they opened roots and shoots and apparently updated other things.</p>
<p>I honestly believe that dining services has been trying hard for five years to update their offerings, and I think they've been doing a good job.</p>
<p>I agree completely MG and Rabo, even though I am going off meal plan. The truth is they're working hard and doing the best you can do really serving 4500 or so people a day. There's just so much that can be done without increasing the amount they're charging students a ton, etc etc.</p>
<p>they don't RESOLVE the PROBLEM because FOOD is EXPENSIVE and BROWN is TIGHT with MONEY</p>
<p>Brown Dining Services is an independent organization, actually. But yes, Brown is tight with money.</p>
<p>I'd much rather have a real student center etc. and well-funded programs than four-star food. As long as it isn't like high school cafeteria crap, it's fine</p>
<p>We don't have a student center largely because many students don't really want one. There was a lot of controversy involved with the decisions to not build a student center on campus even though Ruth Simmons' architectural adviser was pushing for one to be constructed.</p>
<p>For the record, I have never understood the desire to have anything more than what is already in Faunce. Anything else would be a movement toward the gross all-in-one, fast-food-chain, hide-from-the-city, suburban mess that they have at, say, campuses like Georgetown. Which is, incidentally, where I'm posting from :-)</p>
<p>Thayer street is our campus center. So there :-)</p>
<p>^^^</p>
<p>See what I was talking about ElPope.</p>
<p>I'm fine with what we have now, though I can see the appeal of some form of something a little different than what we have now. Actually, the plan was quite exciting, but once of those things you need a bit of vision for and to actually walk outside and see how it would be formed to really get it. I think the Walk is going to alleviate a lot of the desire for more student center like space, especially the Creative Arts building going up. Interestingly, the location of the would be Student Center would come at the start of the walk.</p>
<p>Btw, that space, instead of being a student center is now being reformed into the campus Center for Nanotech, which I'd much rather have.</p>
<p>"I'd much rather have a real student center etc. and well-funded programs than four-star food. As long as it isn't like high school cafeteria crap, it's fine"</p>
<p>you can't have both? Cornell? Bowdoin?</p>
<p>oh cornell food..</p>
<p>I'd love to have the 25k students Cornell has (not really) or the state funding (really, but not from RI, from NY), but Brown doesn't. There is only so much you can do with a certain scale.</p>
<p>I don't know jack about Bowdoin, but isn't it an LAC? The cost of research at a university is tremendous, though well worth it, as is the cost of professors who are looking to teach and do some serious research. Also, the expense of expanding in the surrounding areas when you're in the center of a city makes real estate expensive and hard to obtain.</p>
<p>I wouldn't say Brown is tight with money. Remember the 20 mil spent on Banner? Perhaps prudent would be a better word...</p>
<p>Anyways, food doesn't get improved because food is never a priority at universities. The standard, accross the country, is quite low, and so it stays that way. Same with dorms. If schools everywhere started improving their food, and their dorms (to an extreme amount, as renovations are being made in many places -- but i'm talking like overhaul), then brown would have to keep up. As it is, they simply don't. Furthermore, it's simply hard to make good-tasting food for that many people. </p>
<p>And I would disagree that most students don't want a student center. There's no real place for all students to congregate, and I think that's a big negative about Brown.</p>
<p>"There's no real place for all students to congregate, and I think that's a big negative about Brown"</p>
<p>Then what on earth is Faunce house? This is what I've never understood. To me, Faunce is exactly what a student center is for, it's just that we don't call it one because it doesn't look like the ones that the other schools have been building. </p>
<p>"Waaaahhh, mommmmmmyy, I want a student center like the big state school has!!"</p>
<p>"But honey, you have Faunce House"</p>
<p>"But the other kids have poooooool tables! Wahhhhh!"</p>
<p>Okay, so maybe that's a little bit much, and a tad assholish of me, but I really don't understand what it is that the "student center"-loving people want. Whatever it is, it's not something I or any of the people I know really care about having.</p>