Monday was the 22nd anniversary of the terrorist attacks that took place across the nation on Sept. 11, 2001. It is recognized in the state of Michigan as Patriot Day, and the United States as a whole recognizes the day as one to hold in reverence.
According to the 9/11 Memorial and Museum, 2,977 people were killed including 441 first responders.
Northern Michigan University’s Northern Lights Dining Hall served a meal called the “Sausage Bomber” on Monday, Sept. 11, 2023. The meal consisted of an Italian sausage sandwich with a side of waffle fries.
Let me make that crystal clear to all of you: the NLD served a meal called the sausage bomber on the anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
Students soon took to social media sites, mainly the anonymous campus communication site YikYak, to share their outrage. The name of the sandwich was later changed.
The first piece of writing I made for the North Wind was a column about an NLD slip-up. I’m getting deja vu here.
In February 2022, Northern Lights Dining served “vegan” chicken parmesan at Parsnip which was not labeled as containing milk when real mozzarella cheese was used. I spoke to NMU Director of Dining Services Paul Schoonveld at the time, and he said a vegetarian version of the chicken parmesan recipe was used accidentally in place of an updated vegan one.
I bring up this incident to illustrate that Monday’s mistake was not one that could’ve killed people. If the NLD serves mislabeled food, someone could have an allergic reaction and die, and that was the real problem at hand in 2022.
However, I think you could argue this situation is equally as bad. At the end of the day, I don’t need to ask Paul Schoonveld what happened here. Clearly it was the same incident as in 2022; someone was careless with the recipe.
While there’s nothing inherently wrong with the sandwich name, timing is everything. I don’t know who dropped this ball but it shattered when it hit the ground.
This might not be a situation we can directly compare to the 2022 incident, but it’s certainly an easy way to lose trust of the students. If the NLD can’t have the sensitivity to think about the names of their dishes, how can anyone trust that they have the same sensitivity when they cook food?
Sure, mistakes like this are few and far between, but clearly, double checking recipes is a problem for the NLD. The severity of this mistake and ones previously made by NLD staff makes me wary.
The NLD is an institution whose sole purpose is to feed a large number of people with a wide range of demographics and dietary requirements. Those institutions have the most responsibility to take care with their operations and not make mistakes.
I have yet to see any apology or statement of any kind from the NLD for this mistake. I’m not even sure they recognized the problem until they heard student outcry. It doesn’t matter that this wasn’t a mistake that could lead to student deaths. This is a level of insensitivity that does not represent what it means to beNorthern.
I’ve now seen two major scandals out of the NLD since becoming a student in the Fall of 2021. That’s two too many. Institutions have to be held accountable for their mistakes, and the Northern Michigan University student body awaits the NLD’s apology.
