NYU Students Are Using TikTok To Share Their Horrible, But Hilarious, Quarantine Meals

On average, a student who attends New York University (NYU) pays approximately $60,000 USD in tuition each year.

If you decide to live on campus and access the included dining plan, that cost then goes up by roughly another $19,000. So for $79,000 a year, you’d at least expect some good meals — especially when the university decides to force students into quarantine after resuming classes in the middle of a pandemic.

Unfortunately for those students who board at NYU, the meals they’ve been given during their quarantine stay have been less than ideal. Really, it’s quite grim. Like Fyre Festival levels of grim.

From cereal with no milk paired with a slice of cheese, to vegans receiving steak and cheese salads for lunch, to salad boxes coming with no salad at all — NYU’s under-fed and fed-up students have taken to TikTok to share their horrifying meals.

Some shared that their dietary requirements were being overlooked entirely, while others documented just receiving mouldy fruit, salad dressing and chips as their daily meal. All delicious stuff, really.

And that’s if the students even receive a meal at all. Some have noted that they’ve gone days without being provided with their three required daily NYU-issued meals — with a few actually reporting they’ve only managed to receive one meal in total over each 24-hour period.

But at the very least, NYU has been consistent with delivering bottled water to quarantining students. Perhaps, a little too consistent.

Unlike other schools, that have opted for remote learning while COVID-19 ravages the US, NYU decided that classes would resume on September 2. But with around 15,000 students living on college-owned,-operated or -affiliated housing, NYU wanted to ensure that those returning from “restricted states” isolated before the semester started.

This means that 2,600 students — from 31 of the 50 US states — have been locked up in their dorm rooms since August 18, totally reliant on NYU for food and drink. Unable to leave their rooms, hungry students have used TikTok over the past week as a way to voice their concern over the quality of food and treatment they’ve received.

For example, on her first day in quarantine, one student named Lauren shared that by 3pm she had yet to receive breakfast or lunch. At 6pm, when lunch did finally arrive, it was a soggy watermelon and chicken salad, an unripe orange and peanut butter. And dinner? Well, that was another sad salad delivered at 11.40pm.

As more of these NYU quarantine meal videos started to flood TikTok feeds around the world, media outlets in the US begun reporting on the grim conditions students were living in. From here, the college caught wind of the criticisms and issued a statement and a promise to do better.

“We are aware of the students’ complaints, which are valid. This is a never-before-tried operation for us and our food vendor, Chartwells,” John Beckman said on behalf of NYU. “Nearly 20% of the meals are specialised –kosher, vegan, halal, etc — but it is vital to get it right, and we are disappointed in Chartwells’ management of the quarantine meals process.”

Announcing that they would start making meals earlier for prompt delivery, address complaints, and provide money to students to order food if things still weren’t good enough, NYU explained they were committed to “correcting the situation promptly”.

“We recognise that when people are required to quarantine in their rooms by themselves, few things in the day are more important than looking forward to something nice to eat, so this is a particularly regrettable error, and a let-down for our students,” Beckman concluded.

Since the wave of attention, NYU students have noted that they’ve seen a significant improvement in the meals they’ve been given through more snacks, sufficient meals, timely deliveries and apology notes.

So yeah, I guess absolutely blasting things on TikTok really does get the job done.