Catered students at the University of Winchester have recently started to complain about the service they receive from the ‘Terrace Bar’ during the weekend. Problems first started to arise at the beginning of the second semester when the weekend food area struggled to cope with the large amounts of catered students. On other occasions students claimed to have gone hungry after finding the canteen closed earlier than it advertised.
One catered student from the St. Elizabeth Halls said, “I went to the Terrace Bar on Saturday a few weeks ago to find it closed due to ‘Winton’. The Student Union was empty and showed no signs of the need for the canteen to be closed. Catered students were not informed of the canteens early closure, and because of this we went hungry as there is nowhere else we can go for food at this time.” They went on to say, “If I do not spent all the money on my catering card then I lose it, I find it appalling that I cannot in any way be reimbursed with the money I lost from when the canteen has been closed.”
Other students also complained about the canteen being unprepared for the amount of catered students they were serving and as a result running out of most foods on the menu. Another catered student said, “I am a vegetarian, and for a few weeks running now have been very unimpressed by the Terrace Bar’s lack of food suitable for my diet as they have run out.” I tired to speak to some of the Terrace Bar staff, but they were unable to comment on why these problems had occurred and told me that all they could offer students that had missed out on food through the catering system was a free meal.
I will be following the Terrace Bar closely over the next week to see if the staff have made any attempts to improve the catering system.
Sam Rentmore
