By Kacie Candela
Fordham students have an opportunity to get rid of Sodexo. Jack Brennan/The Fordham Ram.
In early December, a petition on Change.org was posted, asking Rev. Joseph M. McShane, S.J., president of the university and Christopher Rodgers, dean of students, to “Make Fordham University Sodexo-Free.” As of print, the petition has 680 supporters.
The day after the petition went viral, the Senior Vice President for Student Affairs emailed the Fordham community notifying us that the university issued a Request for Proposals (RFP) — meaning that if a better candidate comes along and can compete with Sodexo, the university might switch providers for the 2016-17 academic year.
According to Deming Yaun, the university dining contract Liaison, the decision to open an RFP “was not in response to the petition, as the Request for Proposals had been in the planning stages for most of the summer.”
The university was already in a 10-year contract with Sodexo that began on July 1, 2013. Some of the promises made upon the inauguration of that contract were that what is now Cosi would have become a Starbucks, and The Grille as we know it would have become a Chipotle. Today, neither of those promises have been fulfilled, and Fordham still ranks #13 on The Princeton Review’s “Is it Food?” list for 2016.
However, the university is of the mindset that Sodexo has reached the annual goals set since 2013. This does not include the $3 million penalty hovering over Sodexo if Fordham is not removed from The Princeton Review list. If that penalty is instated, it will “not take effect until Summer 2016,” according to Yaun.
“Customer satisfaction has been increasing since 2013, according to our surveys, with about 80 percent of respondents indicating they are satisfied or highly satisfied with Fordham Dining,” Yaun said. But if these statistics are so high, why has Fordham bothered to issue a RFP at all?
My first thought when seeing that statistic was that it could not be right. I am definitely not satisfied with Fordham Dining (nor do I know anyone who is). Sure, the cafeteria cookies are delicious and students rave about the buffalo chicken wrap from The Grille. But I find it incredibly difficult to believe that students are highly satisfied with the nutritional value, variety of offerings and quality of food provided here.
Perhaps part of the reason why Sodexo was able to renew its contract four years ago was because the only other contractor who was able to have its formal proposal considered was Aramark. At the time, those involved in the process largely agreed that Sodexo offered the better deal to Fordham students. Would this change if the university had actively sought out a wider variety of vendors?
Hopefully this time around, Fordham will learn from its mistakes in the 2012 bidding process and decline to give Sodexo a third chance. According to Yaun, “We are starting with a clean slate: every firm that submits a proposal has a chance of being selected, based on the contents of their proposal.”
Sodexo, however, does not seem concerned. On Sept. 14, 2015, a Fordham/Sodexo worker bargaining committee ratified a new five-year contract with Sodexo management. The contract saved Sodexo money on health coverage for its employees and increased pension contributions for each year.
On the Change.org petition, various students commented that while they despised the food, they do not want the staff to get laid off in the process.
“I want healthier, better-quality food at school. However, the employees are incredible, so I would love it if they were able to stay on staff,” the top comment reads.
“The employees are great but the food makes me feel awful. It’s so repetitive and my allergies make food options so limited that I can’t even eat in every establishment on campus. I’m never full, just sick or bloated from the horrible food,” another student commented.
While these comments echo the sentiment of many students on campus, if Fordham students were truly passionate about exiling Sodexo from our campus, we would do more than sign a petition and forget about it.
Luckily, there will be various opportunities for students to take part in the RFP process this spring. After the proposals are submitted, students will be able to tour dining locations operated by the companies who are finalists. During the week of March 7, 2016, students can attend the presentations by each company, and the winner will be chosen in late March 2016.
If students ignore the opportunity to play an active role in the RFP process, surely Fordham will respond to the anti-Sodexo petition in exactly the same way it responded to The Princeton Review ranking in 2012 — by giving Sodexo yet another chance and claiming that it is our best option.
We already know how Fordham is going to respond. The question we should instead be asking ourselves is: how will our student body respond? With disgruntled murmurings and complaints about food poisoning or real action?
We have the power to decide what we eat next fall, but only if we show the university administration that we are serious about freeing Fordham from Sodexo.
Kacie Candela, FCRH’19, is an international political economy major from Franklin Square, New York.
