D14 noticed the lack of dining hall during our tour her junior year, and while it wouldn’t have been a reason in and of itself not to attend GWU, it definitely was a negative in her eyes.
DH works at a college smack dab in the center of a major city, in an area that is actually more urban than GWU, and filled with all sorts of food options, and it still has a big, very used cafeteria and is building an even bigger one to replace it. DH eats there daily and loves the healthy options. In his opinion, kids will choose the healthy meal often because it looks so good and doesn’t “cost” more than the burger and pizza, while when faced with these choices in the city itself, many choose the less healthy food as it is cheaper.
My son is a freshman and is enjoying the variety of food options available to him with this plan and is actually eating healthier meals than he would with a traditional dining plan. I do think that the lack of a dining hall made it far more difficult to meet people the first few weeks of school and when the few students he knew were busy or in class, he ended up eating a meal alone in his room. If there were a dining hall, he would have had the opportunity to sit down at a table and actually meet new people. This plan is very isolating for a freshman and I think that they need to go back to the drawing board on this.
I received an email that there is a webinar for parents to join at 2 pm tomorrow about dining. I’m assuming they’ve heard the concerns of parents and students and that’s why they are doing it.
agree it was not the best timing - I joined the webinar from work. It was odd and poorly handled. J street was poor quality - so fix that and open a higher quality option at that location - they did not seem to get it that that’s what parents were asking - very hazy about the timeframe for J street. They did not share a timeframe for district commons. Tone deaf. Very disappointed in GWs ability to handle problems and feedback in a forthright manner.
@bmcmom, Wait, what? You attended the webinar yesterday? When we tried to log into it it said WEBINAR CANCELED on the web page. Prior to that, we had connected to the site and it was all set up to go, but it wasn’t there at 1pm Central yesterday.
My son is a freshman in Thurston and while he loves being able to eat out, it is difficult to stay under the ~$17/day limit. He does go to Trader Joe’s (Whole Foods too expensive) for breakfast items and microwavable meals. Tries to only eat 1 meal out/day, but not easy in DC. For example, went to Burger Tap the other night with friends, got a burger ($9) and shake ($5.50) so with tax was like $17. Yes, he could find more of a fast food place and no, he didn’t NEED to get a shake, but when your other meals are cereal and ramen, you splurge once in awhile, but that put him over his daily allotment (when you factor in the groceries and maybe an Uber) and he didn’t even go “fancy”. Add to that a lot of friends who came from wealthier backgrounds, and it’s not that easy. Don’t get me wrong, he should be suffering a little at this age, but still it’s tough in a city like DC to keep your food bills down when you can’t really cook.
I did not fully understand how this worked and was thinking my son was simply dining out when we were paying for his board. Then I looked at what we are paying for our daughter who is currently in a liberal arts college. We are paying about $4500/semester, roughly for 105 days, this works out to $ 42.85 per day. Where as for a freshman in GW we are only paying $1950/semester roughly for 105 days this works out to $18.57.
Despite paying $42.85 per day the students end up ordering food outside and still dine outside using up their spending money.
I agree it will be nice to have a formal dining room, but it will get old very soon for the students and they will still be spending money outside. So I have now offered to make up the difference to my son for his dining [42.85-18.57=$24.27/day]. Surprisingly he says I will ask if I need it !!!
@bmcmom
I agree with you that GWU is not really hearing the parents voices. I volunteered to be part of the GW parent’s association, by responding to an email they sent in August. So far I have not heard back from them… :).
That is how organized they are…
efinand, the webinar did happen. I hope you will email GW and explain what happened to you. tamtiger thank you for the responses. I don’t think any of the parents on the call disagreed with kids having lots of choices, they just wanted those choices to include J street and district house as student-focused centralized dining options. Does anyone here have the skill and ability to start a facebook page for GW parents? Many of my kids friends schools have active parent facebook pages.
@efinand I’m sorry, but your son needs to learn that a $17 meal every day isn’t sustainable. Is it fine to “splurge” every once in a while? Absolutely. But if he’s eating cereal and ramen for two meals a day it’s because of his dinner choices. There are PLENTY of places on campus where a student can get a $7-8 meal (if willing to forgo expensive drinks). If he’s trying to keep-up with wealthier friends, though, he’s going to run out of money. In the end, I’m sure he’ll figure stuff out. He has lots of affordable choices (whether or not he’s willing to try them is a whole other story), so I don’t think that’s the problem.
@tamtiger is spot-on about the cost of GW’s meal plan vs. other schools. UMD College Park, a local state school, charges $2400/semester for a “base” plan. So if you’ve been thinking that your students don’t have enough money to cover their food costs, you’re likely right. However, you thinking it’s because the food on campus is so expensive compared to other places is misinformed.
I suppose that GW has dropped the ball with regard to how much they charge the student for a meal plan, not knowing how much it actually costs for the year. Yes, parents can supplement money for the student’s meals, but I’m sure you all would have rather known up front the “true” cost of eating on campus for the year. Who knows, maybe GW thought it was a way to make the school seem cheaper than it actually is?
The last thing I’ll say is this: eating “well” on campus is completely possible. Are some of your students having issues figuring out what to eat? Yes, that’s completely possible. Would it have been “easier” for them to have a dining hall to eat at for all three meals? Of course. BUT… they are learning/growing as an adult by having to choose for themselves. This is something that they’d have to do upon leaving campus, anyway, so I’d argue that it’s better for them to do the transition now while they’re around so many of their peers to learn from (vice living with a few others in an apartment somewhere and not having so many choices nearby.)
@NHuffer
Having interacted with GW briefly, I feel the University is squandering away chances to become better than what it is. There is definitely lack of [good/better] communication with the parents and family members. When we were looking for colleges last year, we found the web site was not well constructed [did not give all the information what most prospective students and family members will be looking for] intelligently enough to attract more students to explore GW. Rather we gave up looking for information, calls to the GWU did not help us much as well.
In this day and age GW is not properly leveraging technology. Yes, a face book page will be helpful for students and family members current, past and future. Even if it is not very active, the existence of a facebook page will help.
“Yes, parents can supplement money for the student’s meals, but I’m sure you all would have rather known up front the “true” cost of eating on campus for the year. Who knows, maybe GW thought it was a way to make the school seem cheaper than it actually is?”
“I feel the University is squandering away chances to become better than what it is.”
My daughter LOVES GW. I like many things about it, and I am happy she is happy. But I agree the University could be so much better than it is. And four more years of the clumsy inept communication is going to become very frustrating. Maybe a new President will set a new tone.
Would love it if you started a facebook page! tamtiger agrees! It would be easier to use than this page and we’d see posts on our fb feeds.
All, I just created a Facebook group: GW Parents. It’s a closed group (to keep out solicitors and what-not) but I’ll be quick to accept requests. If anyone has suggestions (even if it’s to make the group “open”) let me know. I hope it helps!
@NHuffer, I’d be interested in knowing where the seven dollar meals are at GW. I was there last weekend visiting and I really did feel it was difficult to find reasonably priced items that weren’t burgers /pizza/ fries. Roti is a big favorite but I think their meals are more like 8.95 (and it’s really fast food.) He’s learning, but it’s not as easy as I thought it would be. Another case in point: I noticed while there in DC, how even CVS has jacked up the prices. I was trying to model thrifty behavior and suggested we buy an ice cream treat at CVS. Anything individually sold was inflated. A single drumstick ice cream was over $5!
@efinand For meals under $8 that isn’t fried/grilled, there’s the salad bar in the basement of Shenkman (the Gallery), Potbelly’s (you can choose their “skinny” sandwiches with fewer carbs), lots of different sandwiches at GW Deli. Admittedly, I had my fair share of burgers and grilled chicken sandwiches from Gallery (they were also under $8 I believe), but I wasn’t too concerned with “eating healthy.” There were other options for me at the time (J Street and the other vendors in Marvin) that aren’t available right now, but I’m thinking that once District House opens up again there will be a few more healthy options. The biggest difference a student can make in their meal bill is forgoing sodas. If you just get your food and have some water (they should carry around a Nalgene or other bottle all day) you’ll save anywhere from $1.50-3.00 per meal
