Midterms are almost finished, finals are looming around the corner but thankfully there’s a break in between; Thanksgiving.

For a lot of students, it means going home for the holidays, but for many students, both international and local, they cannot leave and are left behind to be alone on Thanksgiving day. For those students, there are options on Thanksgiving day to get a plate of food at Oregon State University.

University Housing and Dining Services is hosting the Thanksgiving Meals for students, faculty and community members.

Southside Station at Arnold will be hosting a traditional thanksgiving meal on Thanksgiving day, Thursday, November 24 and will run from 5 p.m to 7 p.m. Meals will be nine dollars per person.

The Chefs that will be cooking these meals are hired on by UHDS which do not outsource their meals like many universities do. According to Marketing and Communications Manager, Jennifer Rouse.

“One of the things that I think is awesome about University Housing and Dining Services is that we do hire our own chefs and our complete own culinary team. We don’t outsource to corporate food service providers that some universities do use. We have our own culinary team.” said Rouse.

According to Executive Chef, Jaime Herrera at UHDS, all chefs have strong professional backgrounds and they put a lot of planning into prepping the meals, so expect to have a well-made, traditional meal.

“Their planning out about a month prior, the menu, doing a little bit of research making sure that they get all of the product,” said Chef Herrera. “They usually start ordering the product three to four days prior to it (Thanksgiving). They receive the product in about a day before and they might do 20 percent of it prep the day before. It’s probably about six to eight hours worth of cooking.”

The Thanksgiving holiday break is a great time to relax and prepare for the last few weeks of school. However at the same time many students are left out and end up being alone on Thanksgiving, especially for international students, according to Jacqueline Chambers, Coordinate for International Student Housing.   

“You been away from home for at least two months already and so everybody gets a little homesick at this point,” Chambers said. “American students get to go home for thanksgiving, it’s one of the best part about Thanksgiving holiday being what it is because you’ve been in school for eight weeks and you get to go home and see your family.”

The UHDS tries hard to make it accessible for any and all students to really enjoy a traditional meal and to be able to experience a home away from home.

“It’s not something that is easy for international students. So trying to have that homey experience of a dining hall and being able to have something for students to do when a lot of their peers are gone. Just trying to make it a little bit better.”