The Student Dining Advisory Committee (SDAC) was established last spring as a way to promote student voices in dining. This committee is composed of a variety of students with different dietary needs in hopes of helping accommodate everyone’s requests and creating a healthy relationship between students and Trinity dining.
Students meet weekly to discuss how to improve the dining halls and educate students on the importance of nutrition. Ashleigh Reese, sophomore anthropology and biology double-major joined SDAC due to her passion for justice and health.
“We are a voice to foster a healthy relationship between the student body and the provider,” Reese said. “Food is such an important part of your college experience, and it really is one of those things where people immediately inquire about [dining] on campus when they’re looking for a college. It really can be a make-or-break experience for a college student.”
With the newfound independence gained from college, student eating habits can quickly become poor as they get too busy with work. Not only are healthy food choices in dining halls desired by students but having options for students of different cultures and dietary restrictions is crucial.
Trinity’s previous food provider, Aramark, had issues meeting students’ dietary needs.
“Aramark had snubbed student efforts to communicate with them and their wishes for quality food,” Reese said. “They didn’t want student relationships.”
One student in particular took the initiative to make sure students were heard. Ani Siva, junior biochemistry and molecular biology major, is a lead voice who helped to transition Trinity’s food providers this past year and to establish SDAC.
“After intense deliberation and discussion, we decided that Chartwells [Trinity’s new food provider] would not only be the most ethical solution for Trinity, but also independent of that, would be the only option that could sustain what we think Trinity students want to see,” Siva said.
Chartwells welcomes local restaurants of San Antonio to give students a taste of the surrounding culture. It also brings food trucks to campus, rotating every week, giving students great variety — something SDAC wanted to incorporate on campus.
The biggest change that brings students like those in SDAC the biggest relief is the creation of a student-led organization to voice the concerns of students. SDAC provides the ability to communicate directly with Trinity Dining through the liaison with SDAC, where specific dietary needs can be easily met.
Siva led the team and was part of the board that decided on the new food provider. He spent two weeks reading 400 pages for companies that applied to be Trinity’s new food provider, scrutinizing menus, determining each company’s values and ultimately analyzing which is best suited for Trinity.
“When I first walked into Mabee, I was in tears,” Siva said. “All of these changes, like all the walls of the layouts on everything, all the shifts, everything. … This is the culmination of hours [upon] hours [and] days of work.”
SDAC evolved from two prior organizations at Trinity. Initially started in fall 2020, the student organization Tigers Against Aramark (TAA) was founded to combat the indecent ethical values and poor food quality of Aramark. Students protested Aramark’s place on campus because Aramark was lobbying in the prison industrial complex, which students at Trinity did not want to be associated with.
TAA eventually transitioned into Tigers For Ethical Dining (TFED), which served to work directly with upper administration to oversee a request for change. They were involved in getting different vendors the opportunity to become the new food provider at Trinity.
Harrison Tinker, junior Russian and computer science double-major, joined SDAC in an effort to break tradition in exchange for ethical progress.
“In the past, the reason Aramark festered for so long is because they were never held over the fire,” Tinker said. “They were the status quo and it was time to change the status quo and find an ethical vendor.”
After 50 years, Aramark served its final plate at Trinity in May 2023 and Chartwells entered Trinity’s dining halls as the new food provider across campus. Chartwells welcomes ethical values that align with Trinity’s students. They value student involvement and are open to change in order to benefit the campus.
“Chartwells has an ethical standpoint, flexibility, communication, openness and options for every single lifestyle and dietary option and the choice to just eat well,” Siva said. “There’s a difference between, ‘Hey, here’s some food,’ versus ‘Here’s some food that will meet your individual requirements and also tastes really good.’”
Any student now has the ability to voice what they want to see directly through SDAC. Members of the dining advisory group want to become more well-known campus-wide.
“My hopes for this organization is to open up more and make ourselves recognizable within the student body,” Reese said. “To be familiar faces on campus and have that comfortability where people just come up to us and talk to us and foster a positive relationship with the student body.”
