Too many people, too few options, too little dirhams and swipes: in the past three weeks, campus dining has become a controversial topic.

The transition from ADNH to Royal Campus Services has created quite a few vocal reactions from the student body. One such specific change is combos now including fruit but leaving out dessert — a change having some students cry, “Let them eat cake!”

Campus dining has never been the topic of envy on this campus: in 2018, there were two to three vegetarian options in the entire dining hall. Veggie Might, the plant-based SIG on campus, had to mentor first-years on how to eat sustainably with limited D2 accommodations. However, with time, the vegetarian and vegan options have become robust, even expanding to its own vegetarian counter. If anything, this is emblematic of campus life: NYUAD is a living, breathing organism, and only from student reactions can it grow to accommodate its new and changing student body.

However, the transition has brought up an interesting question: are the recent changes in price giving an outlet for already-discontented students to portray campus dining even worse than it is in reality?

In order to understand student interests concerning dining, The Gazelle conducted a brief survey to capture characteristics of campus dining that are most important to students. With respondents evenly spread across all class years, students rated food quality and food price as their highest priorities (Figure 1 below). Naturally, these items directly affect students in how much food they can eat and of what type.

Notably, the changes that RCS highlighted in the initial transition seemed to de-emphasize these student priorities. As an aesthetic facelift from its ADNH past, RCS emphasized changing its furniture to create distinctive sections and counters, but students seem to be unaffected by these additions. The resulting understanding from students throughout this transition were higher prices for the same dining options. The fallout of this transition has created an echo chamber of negative sentiments with students: while food quality and variety garner average contentment, students absolutely abhor the prices.

We might easily be inclined to say that this reaction is justified, since price changes did occur as the result of general inflation. However, this begs the question: did these changes embolden already-discontented students to portray campus dining services in an even more negative light? Two thirds of the interviewed students saw an increase in their spending during this transition — a response felt both in their wallets as well as their minds.

However, Student Government conducted its own survey, composed by Aarushi Prasad, Class of 2024 and the StuGov Dining Committee Chair, concerning dining on campus, collecting over 500 responses from all classes. In the data shared with The Gazelle, there seems to be a weak correlation, though not insignificant, between those that claim to have small portions and also say that they say the taste has gotten worse. Though a formal experiment would have to be devised to test this further, this finding hints that those who already are discontent with dining options on campus are likely to also dislike its portions and prices (and perhaps vice versa). The change in prices, thus, could have been the tip of the iceberg for a whole host of other problems that students are not happy with.

With this, we need to remind ourselves that, like everything else, these problems get better with time. ADNH collected immense data on its food waste, weighing both before and after meal times to understand student trends, tastes and dislikes, and with that, they shifted food cuisines to accommodate student interests. Similarly, RCS is still witnessing a testing period, wherein they are going to fail in some aspects; but with appropriate and reasoned student voices, we can eventually shape student dining to be more representative and accommodating to an ever-shifting student populace.