The Inconvenient (Health-Threatening) Truth Behind Your Meal Swipes

Finally, an official government website has confirmed one of the most obvious truths of life at Penn: dining halls are gross. Ignorance may be bliss, but we say f*ck it. We decided to travel deep into the archives of the Philadelphia Food Safety Inspection Reports, as one does. We've shown you caterpillars, and we've shown you flies, but what we have here is some NC-17 material. It's Fifty Shades of health concerns, and it's not very sexy.

King's Court

We'll start with something light – King's Court doesn't seem to be doing too badly, except if you're a male who likes to go to the bathroom. Or if you like apples. But let's be real here. Are men's restrooms ever clean? As long as we aren't squat-walking, we're happy.

Hill

We begin our journey at Hill with more bathroom issues, but unlike King's Court, it continues to go downhill from there. Would you like some mouse droppings with your Hill brunch omelet? Or maybe some unspecified vermin for the vegan crowd?

Commons

We knew Commons was bad, but we didn't know just how bad – "immediate corrective action" doesn't sound very appetizing, and neither do "live roaches" or "black residue, pink slime." It's no secret that not everything at Commons is always up to par, but fret not – at least the mouse feces are "fresh." 

Yet another Tragedy of the Commons: not only were live roaches observed, but also dead roaches. We send our condolences to these fragile creatures. 

So, it seems that any freshman on the meal plan has probably ingested rodent poop at some point while dining 1920 Nommons, but it's not all bad – we still have the Bon Appetít lady who calls us baby and lifts our spirits, and there's always that little cabinet of gluten free cupcakes. Plus, did you know Commons is a BYO? Swipe in with your favorite Merlot and get this party started. But still, we're not too eager to finish our 70 leftover meal swipes from first semester. It's still possible to eat for free around campus, though – come kiss UTB at Qdoba this weekend. We only bite sometimes.