"We are aware of the students' complaints, which are valid. This is a never-before-tried operation for us and our food vendor, Chartwells (ie, large-scale delivery of meals to student rooms. There are over 2,600 students quarantining in our residence halls, and every day they are supposed to get three decent meals. Nearly 20% of the meals are specialized–kosher, vegan, halal, etc.). But it is vital to get it right, and we are disappointed in Chartwells's management of the quarantine meals process. We and Chartwells are correcting the situation promptly.
"We are responding to the complaints by:
- adding a shift to start making meals earlier in the day for delivery, so they are ready for delivery earlier,
- adding staff to respond promptly to student food complaints,
- dedicating food-service staff to the speciality meal preparation so that the right number of speciality meals are getting to the right people at the right time,
- adding staff at the residence halls to deliver the meals to the rooms more promptly,
- bringing on an additional food service provider so there is additional capacity,
- and we have authorized staff in the residence halls to order meals through regular delivery services or to provide money to students to order delivery themselves if the food that shows up isn't good enough.
"We recognize that when people are required to quarantine in their rooms by themselves, few things in the day are more important than looking forward to something nice to eat, so this is a particularly regrettable error, and a let-down for our students. We are dismayed that this didn't go off as planned, we and Chartwells apologize to the students, and we are committed to correcting this promptly."