Source 4: An Introduction

Witherly Heights Source 4 is an investigative journalism team designed to tackle local issues that affect us and our community. This semester, we began researching an apparent food shortage, and the seemingly financial reason for the disappearance of cafes at Ohlone College.

Café-less cafes

Vending machines. Not a cafe–just vending machines. For the energy deprived students of Ohlone College, the nearly comatose vending machines are the only source of food within campus boundaries provided by the college. Every so often a desolate food truck manages to scrape it’s way to either campus to deliver delicious gyros or an assortment of sandwiches to delight the palate of students; but it was not always like this.

Ohlone College has always had at least one café, if not more, that students could buy snacks or even lunch from if they got hungry on campus. Last semester on the Fremont campus, there were two, one in the main buildings and one in the student lounge, while at the Newark campus there was also a café. However as of this semester, all of them have been closed, and people are not happy. To make things worse, the Starbucks located just down the street from the Fremont campus closed down, which further limits food options. Now, the only food source on campus is the food trucks, which have limited hours that might not work with everyone’s schedules. 

While this might just have been an arbitrary decision on the part of Ohlone’s administration, due to evidence gathered from multiple sources, we think that it is part of a much larger initiative to cut expenditures and reduce costs across the board. However, keep in mind this is a developing story, and we do not have all the details yet. Look out for the full story in the November issue.