Ferris State University should put the needs of its stu­dents before the needs of the public.

I’ve been attend­ing FSU for three years now. Over time I have watched two cafe­te­rias on cam­pus close and one be ren­o­vated. There are now only two din­ing options for stu­dents with meal plans like myself.

The new Rock Café is great. Students, fac­ulty, and the pub­lic all enjoy it. There is a prob­lem though. Students pay thou­sands of dol­lars to eat there and some­times they can­not even find a place to sit or are treated rudely by non-student patrons.

I have encoun­tered the prob­lem of not find­ing an open table to sit when I go to eat meals mul­ti­ple times. I don’t under­stand why I’m pay­ing so much money for nowhere to sit. If the Rock can­not accom­mo­date all of its stu­dents then it should not try to accom­mo­date the public.

Another thing that really irri­tates me about the Rock is how they bring high school stu­dents in to eat. These tour groups are com­monly referred to as “white– bag­gers” by the stu­dent population.

I under­stand that the school needs to attract new stu­dents, but why can’t they sched­ule these stu­dents to eat at the cafe­te­ria after 1 p.m.? They com­monly bring them in at 11 a.m. or noon when actual FSU stu­dents are try­ing to eat dur­ing the only times they have available.

It’s hard not to get irri­tated when you have only a few min­utes to eat and every food sta­tion is backed-up and you have to wait 15 min­utes just to be served. It’s also extremely frus­trat­ing when entire sec­tions of the Rock are reserved. We pay good money to eat there and should be able to sit wher­ever we want.

More prob­lems arise when the tour guides for these groups tell FSU stu­dents they have to give up their places for these high school stu­dents. It bog­gles my mind that these peo­ple could be that rude. I have lit­er­ally seen tour guides tell stu­dents who pay thou­sands of dol­lars to eat at the Rock to get up from their table so a high school stu­dent could sit there. Needless to say, I had a few choice words with them.

One thing I am sym­pa­thetic to is that the Rock Café receives rev­enue from allow­ing the pub­lic to dine there. That’s fine. This doesn’t mean that it’s a fam­ily restau­rant though. At the end of the day it is a col­lege cafe­te­ria and col­lege stu­dents have their own cul­ture and way of doing things and the pub­lic should respect that.

I’ve seen par­ents come in with their chil­dren before and let them run around com­pletely unsu­per­vised. I’ve also wit­nessed these peo­ple cut to the front of the line, think­ing they had some sort of right to do so. Personally, I get irri­tated with these types of peo­ple because after a long day work­ing on my 18 cred­its and going to my two jobs, the last thing I want is to be irri­tated by things like this.

People from the pub­lic should also under­stand that most col­lege stu­dents swear and they also talk about things like sex. If you don’t want to hear this or you don’t want your child to hear these types of things then you prob­a­bly shouldn’t take them to a col­lege cafe­te­ria because that’s what the Rock is, a col­lege cafeteria.

I think these are seri­ous prob­lems that FSU stu­dents are being forced to deal with. It might be a good idea for Ferris to start being a lit­tle bit more con­sid­er­ate to those of us that pay for this insti­tu­tion to oper­ate. n