The UGBC Senate prepared for an upcoming meeting with BC Dining during its meeting on Tuesday night.
“I think one of the biggest issues with BC Dining is the lack of transparency on a lot of things, especially cost,” said Daniel Wise, chair of the Senate’s Student Life Committee and MCAS ’25. “I think that’s the main goal for them to be transparent about how they operate and why things are the way they are.”
The Senate plans to host BC Dining Director Beth Emery and her colleagues at its weekly meeting next Tuesday to ask questions and engage in dialogue about BC Dining.
Wise said it is important for senators to ask questions that go beyond the basic scope of BC Dining’s functions.
“Make sure you know how things work on a more general basis and then ask more complex questions,” he said.
Lindsay Meier, Environmental and Sustainability Division policy coordinator and MCAS ’26, said that it is crucial to be particularly prepared for this meeting.
“I think we have to have an argument,” said Meier, who serves as the Senate’s BC Dining representative. “You can’t just be like, ‘Oh, it’s a problem that it’s expensive.’ You need to have other things to say because they hear that all the time.”
One way to formulate detailed questions is to consider how BC Dining can improve on a micro-level, like ensuring drinks are restocked faster in Lower Dining Hall, Meier said.
“Think of smaller things we could fix instead of trying to take on all of [BC Dining],” she said.
UGBC Vice President Meghan Heckelman, LSEHD ’25, added that while many people in the Senate have pushed for an all-you-can-eat, swipe-to-enter dining hall system in the past, senators who like aspects of the current system should share their thoughts as well.
“Bring those different opinions and get them out, and we can have a discussion,” Heckelman said.
Earlier in the meeting, UGBC Heckelman applauded the Division of Student Initiatives and all UGBC volunteers for their work organizing Project Life, an event to swab the cheeks of students and add them to the national registry for blood stem cell and marrow donors, on the Quad last Wednesday and Thursday.
“We swabbed nearly 700 cheeks this year, which is about 100 more than we did last year, which is awesome,” Heckelman said.
This influx in participants was partly due to a celebrity appearance, Heckelman said.
“I think having Luke Kuechly there definitely did us some favors,” she said.
