Emily Ellingson, a first year in the College of Health Sciences, said she usually goes to Schroeder every Wednesday. On Oct. 25, she said she ordered her usual: a chicken Caesar salad.
“I was socializing and talking with friends, and I ate the whole salad, looked down and realized there was something that had legs and an antenna in the salad. This bug was not a normal fruit fly that you may find in lettuce, rather it was very large,” Ellingson said.
Ellingson said she alerted one of the chefs, and she said the chef offered her a different dish or a new salad.
“He told me that they have been having fruit fly problems recently, but that is about it. I was hesitant to alert the staff because I didn’t think that there was much they could do about it, which is true, but I decided to anyways because I wouldn’t want anyone else to find a bug in their salad,” Ellingson said.
Similarly, Kelly Gill, a sophomore in the College of Communication, ordered a chicken Caesar salad from the Schroeder dining hall on Oct. 25. She got halfway done eating the salad before finding a bug on the lettuce.
“All I could think of was,’ I was mid-eating that salad, what if there was another bug, did I eat some of the bug? Were there more?'” Gill said.
Right after finding the bug, Gill said she took it directly back to the kitchen. She said she brought it up to one of the workers who scans the IDs at the dining hall and the worker called over one of the chefs.
“I said to the man, ‘If this doesn’t show you that the kitchens need to be cleaned and food needs to be made better, I don’t know what does.’ To me, it was like he didn’t even care and didn’t want to tell anyone. He actually told me to go get a new one…and that was it,” Gill said.
After this, Gill said she didn’t want to make a bigger scene and left the dining hall.
“The lettuce that we use is bagged, precut, pre-washed lettuce. When I was made aware that there was an incident of a bug being found by a student, the lettuce was immediately removed from use,” Stephen Lozotte, Schroeder chef manager, wrote in a statement.
Lozotte said the lettuce supplier was switched to a different one after the first incident was recorded.
“We take food safety very seriously at Sodexo, with many strict standards in place. We also have an ‘A’ rating from the local Health Department,” Lozotte wrote.
Melanie Vianes, general manager of Marquette Dining services, said that they were only aware of one incident.
“If anything like this happens, we want the student to come to the team,” Vianes said. “Things do happen with pre-washed lettuce…that’s something we would usually catch, and maybe we did not this one time.”
Vianes said the management team works very hard and takes these matters seriously.
“The Schroeder Dining Team take so much care and pride in everything they do and were saddened to have this occur. We encourage students to share any feedback they have directly with our teams at the dining halls. We always look forward to speaking with Marquette students and staff about how we can make their dining experience the best it can be,” Vianes wrote in an email.
Vianes said that the dining hall management team conducts internal food and physical safety audits on a monthly basis, and formal training is held with employees upon hire and on a monthly basis.
These two incidents, however, have had an impact on Gill’s and Ellingson’s trust in the dining halls.
“This experience has made me not want to eat here. I can’t trust the dining halls anymore. All I think about is the [bug] in my salad and how they dealt with this situation. I would rather go walk to 7/11 and buy more snacks with my own money than eat anything from Schroeder, let alone any dining hall,” Gill said.
Ellingson said the experience has increased her anxiety about eating food from the dining halls.
“Socializing is an important aspect of going to get food, so you don’t really think about examining your food with each bite,” Ellington said. “I have not ordered another salad yet and I find myself looking through my food first. I think it will take me a while to order another salad and when I do, I will make sure I am looking at what I eat,” Ellington said.
Gill hopes that the dining halls take this seriously and find a way to implement some change.
“What needs to change in the dining halls is the food period. The food needs to be better and [to be] made better. We are paying a lot not to get good quality food,” Gill said.
This story was written by Sophia Tiedge. She can be reached at [email protected].
