Exterior of the Viking Commons on Jan. 24, 2019. Ella Banken//AS Review
By Monica Thomas, Class of 2020, Therapeutic Recreation Major
As holiday season rolls around, I hear people on campus worry about “stuffing their faces” and “binging on holiday foods”. For a great majority of the WWU population, the holidays are the only time they worry about binge eating being a problem. But for some, this obsessive behavior and thought around food consume those affected by an eating disorder every day. I suffer from binge-eating disorder. The National Eating Disorders Association records that 5.5% of people have a binge eating disorder, 1.1% of the U.S population have Bulimia Nervosa, and 0.6% of the U.S population live with Anorexia Nervosa. If we were to take the total percentage of all eating disorders, it would be 7.2%. To put this in perspective, there are 15,915 students enrolled at Western Washington University. If you apply the prevalence of 7.2% to the total of the overall student body, the result will be 1,146 WWU students who are affected by an eating disorder.
From the perspective of a student who went through the long painstaking process of getting out of the meal plan required for on-campus students, I will let you in on the systematic flaws of the process. After talking to my roommate, who was facing a similar issue regarding their meal plan, we concluded the buffet-style dining halls are a toxic environment that could promote students already on the brink of an eating disorder or have already been diagnosed with the conditions listed above to repeat the behaviors associated with their eating disorder. This conversation encouraged me to investigate the process of getting out of a meal plan. After a few days passed, my roommate went to Disability Resource Services (DRS) to get out of her meal plan. When I followed suit, I needed to fill out registration which took a week before getting processed.
While I was there, the DRS receptionist had me schedule a consultation with one of the advisors in their office to see how DRS could help me monitor my eating within the dining halls. Within the next few weeks, I was sitting in front of a woman I never met, justifying my eating disorder to her and why the dining hall environment was not beneficial to preventing me to compulsively overeat. Unfortunately, it turned out the person I truly needed to consult and who pulled the true weight with the dining department was a different advisor. She luckily gave me his card, but I, once again, had to do the work to get one step closer. After contacting and reaching him through email, and waiting a week or two, I finally got to meet with him.
The appointment went almost the same as the last one, regarding having to fully justify my eating disorder to a stranger. Unlike the conversation with the woman before, he insisted on me sticking with the meal plan, having me arrange a time with dining services to make me a customized meal at a specific time and dining hall each day. The situation sounded quite stressful to take on, as I constantly would have to adjust to school, office hours, extra curriculars, etc. After discussing this alternative with my roommate later the same day, she pointed out how people with eating disorders, whether excessive or restrictive, stress over food to an obsessive point and the same choice they gave both of us was more detrimental than helpful. The advisor then went on to ask, justifiably, how I would get meals if I did not have a meal plan. I answered I was currently living in BT, which included kitchenettes, that allowed me to make my own food. The money would be allocated to buying groceries instead. The advisor accepted my answer, but wanted a signed letter from my therapist and a phone call with her later to confirm the credibility of my case.
The last major step to this process was having my case sent to the dining department. After the advisor called my therapist and signed off on my case, they then had to email the dining department and ask for them to take me off their roster. With a stream of constant emails over a course of a few weeks, the dining department finally got back to us and was starting the refund process and gave me a meal plan waiver. Due to the fact I still had to eat during this gray period of not knowing whether I would qualify for a refund, I had to eat in the dining halls. When my refund came around, they deducted the cost of the meals I ate in the meantime, while my case was being processed. At the very least, when all was said and done, I could take comfort in the fact I did not have to go through the whole meal plan withdrawal process the next quarter.
The reason I bring this issue to the public’s attention is to help anyone who is currently in the same boat as I. Secondly to address the insensitivity and lack of communication the university institution has for student wellbeing, in addition to how difficult it is to navigate those systems and departments. Thirdly, there needs to be an end to the contract between Buchanan Towers and Aramark that requires on-campus students to have a meal plan. I demand further action against the current process that is meant to adjust to a student who cannot conform to an able-bodied and neurotypical meal plan.
-Monica Thomas
Note from the editors: This article was edited solely for grammar and not for content. Submit guest submissions to as.review@wwu.edu.