Imagine, you’re eating a chicken sandwich. It’s just what you needed after studying and pushing yourself to get homework done. As you’re finishing your last few bites, you notice something at the bottom of your sandwich— mold. You just ate a moldy bun.

For Will Ledet, junior pre-pharmacy major, this was a reality.

Recently, Bethany Hellmers, junior nursing major and Ledet’s girlfriend, posted on Student to Student at ULM a picture of a half-eaten moldy bun that Ledet had been served at Schulze. Hellmers’ post immediately took Student to Student by storm. Soon, other students were sharing their stories of globs of hair in the food, moldy buns and slugs in the peas.

While food services was contacted to give a statement, they did not respond. We will follow up on this story once we hear from them.

Sagar Shah, who graduated in spring 2019 as a mathematics major, said that he found a plastic glove inside his food at Schulze.

But incidents like this have been going on a lot longer than the past spring semester. Graduate of psychology in fall 2017, Heather Naglar, said in spring of 2016 when she was a student at ULM, she found metal shards in her pizza.

“Just as I take another bite of my pizza, there’s a hard bit in my food. I just about instantly knew it was metal because I have fillings and anything that’s metal irritates them when coming into contact with it,” Naglar said. “So, I spit it out and decide to go to the SUB for food instead because I had no intentions of finishing my food from Schulze after that.”

While Yogesh Agrawal, senior mathematics major, has never found plastic gloves or metal shards in his food, he said a major issue he has with Schulze is cross contamination and the “lack of care towards cross contamination.”

“When I tried to get some rice made in the custom section near the burger area, the cook kept using the same spatula to mix everything. I told the person I am a vegetarian and can’t eat meat, but still no effect and the continuous use of the same spatula to mix chicken dish with mine continued,” Agrawal said.

In another incident, Agrawal said that he has returned multiple plates of food because the plates had blood on them.

“If the plate has blood on it, it’s not vegetarian or safe for that matter,” Agrawal said.

With numerous students sharing their horrifying food stories, many may began to wonder, “Have they reported this?”

Hellmers and Naglar said that they did not know where to report their incidents, but both have pictures of their food. Shah said that he didn’t complain because “nobody would listen anyways.”

Naglar said she thought it was important to have places to report food incidents too.

“Just like the ULM FIXX IT, we should have a place to put in complaints or concerns about things like this,” Naglar said.

To Agrawal, this issue is more of administration’s fault than any one else’s.

“It’s the administration’s fault. They should be the ones giving the workers proper training and keeping everything in check,” Agrawal said. “There are cards called BE HEARD at these food services but no actions are ever taken to anything we post in there, so there should be an active place where we can mention our concerns and expect to have some sort of action taken,”

Another issue Hellmers said she had is the meal plans. Hellmers said if the on-campus meal plan was not required they wouldn’t get them.

“Either improve the quality and safety of the food, or make meal plans optional for everyone. Otherwise, we are stuck paying thousands for spoiled food,” Hellmers said.

Agrawal also agreed with Hellmers and said, “A meal plan without CAF meals compulsory would be ideal.”

But some think the Schulze should just be closed all together.

“Even if the management doesn’t take proper care after, CAF should be closed. At least we would not be served plastic, mold or shit like that,” Shah said.