Meeting the President

I had some concerns with the food that we are served here. It, unfortunately, does not taste so great. Unlike in high school where I felt that things were not that important to change, in college now, I feel like I can make a change. Since I was unhappy with the food I decided to attend the President's open office hour. This was an opportunity for me to get to not only meet with the President, but get to voice my concerns about the food and several other opportunities. I arrived about 5 minutes before it was scheduled to begin and sat on a nice comfy couch on the third floor of Hinsdale. There were several other people that were going to meet with the president, so I knew that I would not have all of the time in the world, but I did not let this discourage me. About 15 minutes after the time was set for it to start, the president invited me in to talk about my concerns and comments. I had a very intelligent conversation with the President of the college about my opinions on the food service and several other things. I would have liked to have gotten a picture with the President, but unfortunately I was unable to get that.

I expressed how I was unhappy with the quality of the food that the current dining service is offering. He told me that we actually outsourced our food service in order to make it better, and unfortunately it did not work. I was surprised that the food service cost more than doing it in house, but I realized that it made sense that the food service would be hired to make the college look better. I then also voiced my concerns that some the maintenance around campus was not getting done, and that I was frustrated with that. President Chema said he would look into it and he wrote something down to look at later.

As I parted ways with the President, I realized that I would not have had this opportunity if I had attended a big state school, or even a bigger private school. Even though students pay a lot of money for college, many of them cannot talk with the administrations about how the school is being run, and I feel that this opportunity at Hiram is a great one.