Agreed, Most of my cadets pay is used for food.
I'd be very interested at how this could be. Are you saying your cadet spends his free income on "extra" food at Grant hall or PX? Or that somehow they are being charged more for food than books, uniform, etc in the cadet pay deductions?
My understanding is that the cadet meal budget is not deducted from cadet pay. (See the
cadet tax letter. )
Not to defend DCA, but they have some pretty big challenges:
- Must meet Army dietary guidelines which are now much stricter
- Must maintain the capability to serve 4000+ people in a single sitting
- Must deal with a highly variable attendance
- Must minimize waste (previous years they spent tens of thousands of $$ disposing of uneaten salads & vegetables)
Not calling you out, just pointing out there is much misinformation on this subject, and often the cadets are the last ones to know the real situation.
I used to be critical of Grant Hall until the head of DCA did a comparison of their sandwich costs & ingredients with similar offerings on post and surrounding towns/malls. Same for Pizza's, etc. And any income from DCA restaurants & shops goes back to the cadet activity budget.
Comparisons to some of the regular army posts (even overseas) are not realistic.... they do not have to get the volume of people in and out in under an hour like USMA has to with cadet meals. Without changing some of the USMA traditions it will be very difficult to use the of the approaches large mil bases use. (Food courts, etc)
DS put things this way: "It's institutional food. Not the best, not the worst I've had. Some stuff is really good, other I don't care for. But I never go hungry. My biggest request is that they'd start serving Jelly the same meal they serve the biscuits & butter."
It's the Army, parents. It's not a fine restaurant.... having eaten in roughly two dozen college food courts/dining halls in the last couple of years, including USMA... it's not that bad.