'Empowered to make changes': Student Dining Board weighs in on CDS operations

The Carolina Dining Services’ Student Dining Board is tasked with making decisions about everything from the meals served at dining halls, to addressing food insecurity at UNC. Their role allows direct communication between students and dining staff. 

The group meets biweekly to talk about menus and hours of operation at various CDS locations and pricing. They also sample foods that will be on future CDS menus and approve changes to dining locations before they are finalized. 

The program was implemented by 2012 after CDS noticed a need to gather insight from the student community to help them improve their services. 

There are 13 listed members of the board on the CDS website, consisting of a chairperson, at-large members and representatives from Student Government and housing. Other members include the director of dining, auxiliary services employees and Student Union personnel. 

Director of Dining Christen Flowers said that other employees and staff from CDS like to sit in on the meetings as well, saying that having a large variety of members allows for more perspectives and direct feedback to be heard, enabling issues to be corrected sooner. 

Flowers said that students apply to be a part of the board, with her and the chairperson hand selecting the members. 

Sophomore Ava Astilla, an at-large member, has enjoyed being on the board for the past two years because of the unique position it offers her. She said she feels that her role is important because she can act as a liaison between students and administrators. 

“Getting to hear the staff and the administrative perspective, I think, makes me appreciate just kind of the thought and organization that goes into the flow of everything related to dining at Carolina,” Astilla said. 

Astilla said the board has a secret shopper program in which student members are given an allotment of money to spend at different CDS locations every other week. They try different menu items and complete a survey based on the food quality, atmosphere, cleanliness and friendliness of the staff. 

The surveys are reviewed during the next meeting and changes are made based on what the students had to say about the locations. 

Every spring semester, the board is involved in disbursing a $10,000 grant from Aramark, UNC’s food contractor. The board hears from various community organizations fighting food insecurity and invites the finalists to give presentations about their plans for the funding before deciding who to give the money to. 

In the past, the grant has been awarded to groups like the Carolina Community Garden, Edible Campus UNC, the Carolina Cupboard and Nutrition Coalition. Bobby Peters, the board’s current chairperson, wrote in an email to The Daily Tar Heel that the funding helps bring awareness to existing resources for students and assists more people. 

“This grant can support any organization that works in the community to support food security, which gives us the opportunity to assist wonderful organizations that aren't official UNC Registered Student Organizations and are therefore not eligible for some other major sources of funding,” Peters wrote. 

The grant has also helped fund research at UNC, most recently work done by a graduate student in the Nutrition Department at the Gillings School of Global Public Health related to students’ access to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. 

Flowers said she has had people from other schools contact her to ask about the student dining board program in hopes of implementing something like it at their own institutions. She said having an opportunity to be involved in dining decisions allows students to feel like they’re making a difference. 

“I hope that they feel empowered to make changes, and I hope they come back and see some of the changes they did make,” Flowers said. “I think that's a really neat part of this is we truly take what the students say and try to put it as much as possible into implementation.” 

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