By Emily Hayes
Campus Center restaurants no longer have self-serve drink options. With the exception of Damien’s, the soda machines are turned around, out of student reach.
Before, students were able to ask for a drink at any of the dining options, receive their cup, and get their own drink from one of the multiple soda machines. Now, a worker has to fill the drink for you, making lines longer.
Not only does this add to the list of things the workers have to do, but it also doesn’t allow students to get a drink more than once. Personally, I always used these cups for water instead of always buying plastic water bottles.
A cup of soda usually costs anywhere from 10 to 20 cents per cup. Refills cost even less, as the main cost is the cup itself.
Even McDonald’s lets their customers refill their drinks as many times that they want, not to mention McDonald’s drinks are generally cheaper.
Quite a few students had their own opinions about these drink machines. Andrew Weiderman, a junior, believes it is “pointless”, and that he usually used the drink machine to fill his cup with water.
“I liked having the ability to keep refilling my cup with water,” says Weiderman. “Now, when I ask for a cup of water they give me a small plastic cup. It was more convenient before.”
Jake Savitsky, sophomore, described the change as annoying and frustrating. He called it is greedy, and “another way for the school to try making more money.” His roommate Calvin agreed, saying that now he doesn’t get a drink from the vendors anymore.
Self-proclaimed “Soda Fountain Enthusiast” Kelvin Pettway thinks it is “messed up,” bringing up a great point by saying that people buy fountain drinks for the refills, otherwise they would just buy a bottle.
For most of these students, the main attraction of these drinks was the ability to refill it, even if advised not to. Most students didn’t even do that much, but the option to grab a water quickly without wasting a bottle was a great one.
Most of the students I spoke to agreed that it was nice to be able to see the various options of drinks from the different food vendors. Not all of these places had the same options, so you either had to get a different drink, or wait at another restaurant.
All in all, the war on soda this semester is greedy on behalf of the University, and a bad idea in general. Some students are put-off, and say they don’t even grab a drink anymore from these places.
The University tried to pinch a few pennies, and it came off as cheap.