There should be more inexpensive dining options on campus. To
get lunch at an on-campus restaurants, one expects to pay a minimum
of $3 and oftentimes more than $5. Such prices are hefty,
considering many students who work receive an hourly wage of about
$7. Additionally, many students are in debt with loans, car
payments and tuition. Indebted students not only lack money, they
owe money (a.k.a. negative funds). Thus, paying $5 or more for
lunch seems unfair, infeasible and impossible for many.
The options that are best suited to students’ needs are
not available on campus right now: a foot long vegetarian burrito
for $2.25, a hot dog for $1.25, papusas for $1, and homemade corn
chowder for $1.50. These are options in Westwood Village and in
other parts of the city where sidewalk vendors roam. I propose that
sidewalk vendors in Korea Town and Echo Park, for instance, be
recruited to sell their delicious, affordable foods on campus.
These vendors should be afforded a space to sell their valuable
commodities. Other vendors are allowed to sell newspapers, shoes,
bracelets and other things which are not as vital as food.
Vendors with food carts would take up no more room than a table
for presidential candidate Lyndon La Rouche. And these vendors
would not try to convert students to their ideologies, or take
students’ money for the “revolutionary cause,”
while trying to elect a candidate who has been unsuccessfully
running for president since the 1970s. These vendors would take up
less room than a Bruin Republican bake sale and would not
discriminate based on race or sex. Lunch cart vendors would simply
ask to be paid in small bills for a delicious lunch.
Even vending machines, which are an eyesore to some, cannot
compare in hot, home-cooked value to lunch cart vendors. To get a
pre-wrapped tuna sandwich it costs $2.25. To get a Cup Noodle it
costs $1.25, plus the time and effort it takes to find hot water.
Compare that to the delicious, filling, hand-made pork and cheese
papusa I had the other day in Korea Town for only $1.
Best of all, these vendors would add “spice” to
campus eateries. Chain restaurants on campus are bland. Some
don’t even deserve to be here. Taco Bell is a restaurant
empire that refuses to give migrant workers ““ who harvest the
company’s tomatoes ““ a one cent per 32-pound bucket pay
raise that would give them a chance at earning minimum wage. Even
this low wage seems impossible to attain at this point, as Taco
Bell continues to deny the demands of workers, some of whom
participated in a hunger strike that ended up lasting ten days. The
workers would have to pick tons of tomatoes a day in order to get
the pittance any teenager takes for granted.
Mom and pop vendors, who make foods in their own unique ways and
operate responsibly, are seldom seen in this increasingly
corporation-dominated world. Small business is devoured at the
hands of corporate efficiency. But there is nothing efficient about
paying $5 for lunch when the same lunch could be bought for $2. The
food service establishments in poorer neighborhoods, like Korea
Town and Echo Park, are less dominated by large, price-manipulating
corporations that are really only making overpriced versions of
ethnic foods found elsewhere. Cheaper, more diverse cuisine must
flourish.
Let’s take advantage of the diversity of our city’s
inexpensive dining options and recruit some sidewalk vendors from
the less affluent, minority-populated communities. After all, as
students, we are poor and a minority. Yet, because of artificial
wealth (credit cards and student loans), we can spend more than we
should for a decent lunch on campus. Don’t we, like those in
Echo Park, deserve the same cheap, delicious hot dog with grilled
onions and spicy peppers? Mmm. I sure think so.
Linneman is a third-year communication studies
student.