colleges cater to changing appetities...how bout changing demographics?

According to The New York Times, universities and colleges are making changes to their dining menus. Lobster, prime steak, white spinach lasagna are all making an appearance in college dinning halls...

gosh, when I was in college, all I looked forward to was leaving the dining hall without a queasy stomach...

The article states,

"But as palates grow more sophisticated and admissions become more competitive, many top colleges are paying attention to dining rooms as well as classrooms."

One college director of housing and dining adds,

"And [students] don't just want that product in name only, but they want it to be authentic, because they've eaten at Wolfgang Puck's restaurant and they want to smell that hickory wood burning."

I don't know but this leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Are palates growing more sophisticated? Or are more students from affluent backgrounds who are accustomed to this style of eating being accepted to these colleges?

One student says,

"I didn't apply to Bates, because, well, I ate there, the meal was not very good," Lucas Braun, a 17-year-old senior at Westtown School, outside of Philadelphia, who has been accepted at several colleges in the Northeast. "There's something subliminal from the food you see in the dining hall and the meal they give you that influences your decision."

Really, now. When I was applying to colleges, it was the cost of the school and the financial aid package that was the influencing factor in my decision. Well, I did think about food, but more in the would I even get to eat considering the cost of tuition kind of way.

As a Latina from one of the poorest neighborhoods in Los Angeles county, I was fortunate enough to even get the chance to apply to colleges, and that was only because many of those annoying application fees were waived based on the plain fact that my high school was both poor and underachieving. I was lucky enough to be on the campus of a small, private, liberal-arts school. And during my time there, I was much too busy fighting the system to care whether my food was cooked to order. I only demanded an occasional tortilla here and there to calm my homesickness.

With this in mind, I can't help but think that rich kids are the motivating force behind wood-fired pizza, grilled sesame crusted tuna with wasabi mayo, and lobster.
Lobster, yeah,
lobster…