With pigs-in-a-blanket, bratwurst on a bun and wiener schnitzel, who wouldn’t enjoy “Oktoberfest Bar Night” in the Ohio State dining commons?OSU sophomore Nnenna Ofobike didn’t. She said the food looked unappetizing and it tasted just like it looked. A resident of Lincoln Tower, she lacks a kitchen or time to go to the grocery store, relying on the dining halls for the majority of her meals. Ofobike, like many other students living in the residence halls, has many problems with the dining commons. Criticisms ranged from the standard complaints about poor quality, to lack of vegetarian selections to a seeming disparity between food from the north and south dining commons.”For the amount that students pay for their meal plans, they should be served good meals that fit most people’s schedules and basic dietary needs,” Ofobike said.Timothy Keegstra, director of Housing Food Services, said that OSU does its best to suit the students’ needs and offer a variety of choices. Keegstra said meal plans are optional, so students have the choice to not purchase one. He explained that the number of meals in each plan and the prices of the plans are based on students’ habits historically. Prices range from $635 for an “8 meals plus” plan to $820 a quarter for the “19 meals plus” plan.For “19 meals plus,” a student is expected to eat about 14 meals and the surplus to be a part of the resident advisers’ compensation. He said that if every student used all of the meals in his or her plan, the plans would cost much more. The prices also include a $100 Buck ID deposit. Keegstra said in order to offer a wider selection of food during more convenient serving hours, OSU is opening Mirror Lake Cafe. It will be located in Pomerene Hall at the former Rathskeller and will be open Monday through Friday from 7 a.m. to 2 a.m. and from 4 p.m. to 2 a.m. on the weekends. The cafe will include a hot deli and a bakery where students will be able to use their meal plans and Buck ID. Rupal Patel, a sophomore living on northwest campus, is a vegetarian. She says that the food this year has improved slightly, or at least “sucks a little less.” She lived on south campus last year and liked having Sprouts cafe (OSU’s vegetarian dining hall located in the Kennedy Dining Commons) next to her dorm, but this year it is too far for her to go there regularly. The Morrill commons does not always have something she can eat, so she usually ends up resorting to cereal or the salad bar.”A salad every now and then is good, but it gets old when it’s your whole dinner almost every night,” Patel said. She also said that it seemed like there was a better selection and a wider variety in both the salad bar and Buckeye Express on south campus.In response to the claims that the food in certain locations is better, Keegstra said that he had no explanation.”The food is all the same and though there are different cooks, they are all trained together,” he said. “I think that some of it, at least on south campus, is the ambiance.”He also stressed that any and all additions to the commons are an extra cost and must be sufficiently backed by student support. He said that the percentage of vegetarian food on the menu is higher than the percentage of vegetarians with meal plans and that previous experiments proved that not many students took advantage of vegetarian additions to the food selection.Keegstra suggested that students should make use of the comment cards located outside of every dining commons. He assured that they are regularly read and considered, and most students are contacted as soon as possible about their suggestions. “The only time I had a complaint, I filled out a comment card and within a short while, received what I requested,” said Jason Baylor, a senior and former resident adviser.He expressed satisfaction with the commons and thinks many students complain about it too much.”I also think that many students compare OSU’s food to that of other universities with more money and higher tuition,” Baylor said. “They see the grass being greener on the other side of the fence.”Keegstra said that students may also voice their concerns through the Housing Food Services’ annual survey, through the survey page on the web site or they may call the department directly. The only way Housing Food Services can know that students are dissatisfied is if they tell them, he said.