Bombshelter conspires against South Campus
By Ashkan Lashkari
Most students destined to become future mathematicians, doctors
and engineers at UCLA Â those that gravitate to South Campus
 must overcome some major obstacles in their path.
For some, it’s grueling laboratory experiments and anatomical
dissections, and for others it’s simply organic chemistry.
But the challenge that most students appear unable to digest is
the nutritional gourmet selections provided by the Bombshelter.
The Bombshelter remains a fixture in South Campus as the only
food service available to students which popularized the now
ubiquitous chicken and vegetable rice bowl.
This entree, along with others, in fact, stands as the ultimate
challenge students must survive and endure in order to someday
fulfill their dreams in the science world.
The Bombshelter simply serves the worst food on campus, and that
is a pretty dubious distinction considering the other eating
hazards on campus.
I vividly remember the first time I sat vis-á-vis the
chicken rice bowl at the Bombshelter two years ago. The dish, new
and inexpensive and apparently nutritional, pleased my palate and
stomach.
Students foreign to South Campus soon flooded the Bombshelter to
get a taste of what everyone was raving about: thinly sliced
marinated pieces of chicken, steamed green vegetables and sticky,
salt-free rice.
But once there was a high demand for the dish, the gourmet Spago
impersonators transformed into wannabe, incompetent Panda Express
cooks.
The chicken, once tender and moist, metamorphosized into stiff,
uncooked pieces of bone (I don’t know how they pulled that
off).
I continued to give the Bombshelter a chance and occasionally
the food returned to its initial taste, but eventually something
new would go wrong, like the rice or the vegetables.
At times the rice was uncooked and when you tried to chew, it
felt as if your teeth were falling off.
Furthermore, they would often serve gargantuan-sized broccoli or
whole cauliflowers that were unmanageable and frustrating to chew
and swallow.
Finally, I asked myself what the place was trying to achieve by
serving unbearable food.
Obviously, the Bombshelter had an ulterior motive.
Then it hit me  the food is designed to turn science
students into humanities students and change their course of
life.
As ridiculous as it may sound, ask any student who has changed
from science to humanities.
The biggest changes observed in their day-to-day lives, they
will respond, are their eating habits.
As for me, I’m still a science student, but I circumvent the
hazards of Bombshelter food by not eating the rice bowl and
indulging in exquisitely made, tasteless, turkey and ham
sandwiches.
More importantly, I don’t pay for my lunches anymore because I
use the free meal coupons given to me by my brother who works in
the medical center.
So, ha ha ha, Bombshelter!
Lashkari is a junior double-majoring in microbiology and
molecular genetics and art history.