Campus food service has many obstacles to dodge, and a lack of student workers is one of the biggest.

Starting last semester, the large absence of these student workers caused dining areas in the halls not to function as they should.

When fall semester starts, dining services needs more than 400 workers,” said Ralph Chaplin, director of dining. “Only about 100 students came back from spring semester, so there’s a large gap.”

This gap has caused problems such as the grills at Neptune and Stevenson being closed during normal hours of operation.

“At the beginning of this semester, we had to use paper plates and plastic utensils in Neptune. We normally don’t do that,” Chaplin said.

Students have many reasons for not wanting to work in food service.

Senior history major Rachel Lynch said she wouldn’t want to work in food service because “you get minimum wage, and it seems like a lot of work for minimum wage. I might be interested if they paid more.”

Keshia Bonner, a freshman undecided business major, also said that she wouldn’t want to work in food service.

“It’s just not something I’m interested in,” she said. “If they raised the pay, I still wouldn’t be interested.”

Chaplin said discussions about how to bring in more student workers currently are in progress. The discussions include possibly raising the pay, but no plans are in the works yet. In addition, no plans are being made to hire non-NIU students to fill the empty spaces.

“Our commitment is to employ NIU students,” Chaplin said. “We do have a program that allows us to hire a limited number of high school students. They are referred to as ‘extra help.’”

Even with this situation in progress, some students seem not to be affected by the shortage of workers. Both Lynch and Bonner stated that the grills being closed haven’t made any difference to them.

For the students who it does matter to, however, Chaplin offered hope.

“Spring semester is more staffed,” he said. “By January, things run more smoothly.”