Why FEC needs its own mini bistro

By Kristyn Pankiw | gargoyle@flagler.edu

It’s nice having such a small campus as Flagler College. Everything is located within a block’s radius, which makes going to class, visiting the library and picking up food when you’re on campus convenient and easy. Whether you live in Lewis, Cedar, or Ponce, you’ve basically got it made.

But what about all the students in the FEC Towers?

As a transfer student living in the towers myself, I’ve noticed what an annoyance it can be having the only place to eat on campus located half a mile and four blocks away. It doesn’t sound like a far distance, and for the most part, the walk is manageable. But when you’d just like to grab a quick breakfast early in the morning, or want an easy dinner so you can get back to your homework, the walk looms ahead like a dreaded trip to the dentist.

When it’s dark, early, rainy, late, cold: the walk seems like an eternity. When your stomach is growling at you to feed it fast and you’ve barely got 30 minutes to spare, you wonder, wouldn’t it be much more convenient if I could just pick up something quick in FEC?

While Carmelo’s is located across the street, the place doesn’t take your dining hall card—the same card you pay a whopping $4,280 to use for meals a year. And, oh yeah, you can’t opt out of a meal plan.

It’s especially inconvenient for transfers (who make up the majority of residency in the towers), who can’t tailor their meal plan to their eating habits because technically, they’re “first year students.” Welcome to many wasted breakfast meals and money spent on gas station food. Mom and Dad would be proud.

Here’s what I propose: let’s put a mini Bugg’s Bistro in FEC. If FEC residents could grab coffee, pastries, a quick wrap, salad, or that awesome hummus-and-pretzel deal without having to trek across campus every time, I think we’d all be a little happier, healthier and a little less broke.

“Sometimes I just need something quick, but I’ll end up skipping a meal because it’s inconvenient,” says Maggie Mitchell, a junior transfer student. “I’m wasting money, but it can’t always be helped.”

“I can’t tell you how much money I’ve wasted picking up a slice of pizza from Carmelo’s instead of going to the dining hall for dinner,” explains Kailey Deason, also a junior transfer student at Flagler. “The girls in Ponce don’t know how lucky they are to literally roll out of bed, walk down the steps and grab something to eat every morning.

It’s counter-productive, this set-up. If Flagler would invest the money into opening up a bistro in FEC, there’s no question it would be successful. Not only would students stop skipping meals, they’d probably purchase more Bistro Bucks, and Security could use their time to actually keep campus safe rather than drive students back and forth at night between the dining hall and the towers. Confession: they don’t like it, we don’t like it.

So please, Flagler College, can we get some special treatment? We pay to go here too, you know.