By Brad Horton ’15

“There’s a story behind everything we do.”

I never thought about the world behind the scenes of the cafeteria. I simply walked in, bought my food, and walked out. However, there is an entire behind the scenes world to our cafeteria, and the curtain of this world was lifted through my interview with Mr. Pietravoia ,Director of Campus Dining.
The cafeteria is dedicated to get healthy food from local vendors. The Chiptole Bar, Salad Bar, and the hamburger meat is all from local vendors, and these products are hormone and antibiotic free. That often results in higher prices, especially for the Chipotle Bar. “We’re buying the better chickens. We’re making a lot of that stuff from stratch. It takes four of us (cafeteria workers) to run that (Chipotle Bar). The expense is there that we need to cover.” Mr. Pietravoia said.

The meat the cafeteria purchases is always local from Gerber Meats or Great Lakes Smoked meats, and the fruits and vegetables are purchased locally when they are in season. The cafeteria has plans to discuss business with Ohio City Farms in the spring. This push for local vendors supports local sustainability and offers a fresher product.

Our school cafeteria is largely an independent agency from the school, the diocese, and the federal government. This means that the salaries, utilities, and food items for the cafeteria are all paid for through student purchase. If the cafeteria were to use the school’s budget, tuition would rise more quickly. Being independent from federal and diocesan lunch programs allows our cafeteria a great amount of freedom when it relates to the food served and portions. For example, a federal of diocesan program would cut the size of a pizza slice to about 1/3 of its current size, and that smaller slice of pizza would count as a lunch itself. Nearly all of the burgers in the cafeteria would be banned or reduced to size of a slider. “It just didn’t seem feasible to stay on that program (the federal lunch program).”

People Water has recently been added to the cafeteria as a healthy and charitable beverage. People Water gives the equivalent of every bottle purchased in clean water to nations that need clean water. However, People Water doesn’t simply give this water in the form of a bottle; this organization actually builds wells in these developing nations. They give clean water to people of village that would otherwise hike for miles to find clean water. Our cafeteria supports People Water because the organization expands the cafeteria’s cause of local sustainability to global level. St. Ignatius is such an avid supporter of People Water that since November 15, 2014, the school sponsored a well in Nicaragua. Dog tags, like the one on the well, may soon be handed out to the St. Ignatius community in hour of our accomplishment.

There are plans in the future to possibly bring an Asian station to the cafeteria. This would be similar to an Asian food area found in a mall. “Sort of like you would see in the mall with the noodles, rice, and vegetables, choose either the beef or chicken.” The Cafeteria is also looking to get kiosk to sell food items from. This stand could be in the atrium or out on the mall when the weather is nice. There are still details to work out it terms of what food to sell, the equipment needed to sell that food, and a mobile device for the lunch program accounts. “We’re out there. We’re looking, trying to see what we can provide that has a meaning behind it, not just a product to sell…We want to be more involved with the student body. We want to do things that are good, not just slop food out there.”

by Michael Broerman ’15

It is daunting to enter into an establishment built by greatness and hold your own, but that is the challenge faced at the CSU Rock Off at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Hundreds of kids, some as young as thirteen, enter into this holy house of music in an effort to take their shot at stardom. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is hallowed ground to millions of fans and home to legends of music history. Larger-than-life pictures of Jim Morrison, Bob Dylan, David Bowie, and more legendary musicians line the hallway that leads to the conference room where these amateur bands prepared.

I had the good fortune of witnessing the Rock Off which featured some more than memorable acts. As I entered the second round at the Hall of Fame I was greeted by The Loose Strings’ acoustic cover of Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean” that was about half as fast as the original. This first band marked the beginning of a couple of recurring themes of that night. First, the overwhelming majority of bands that performed featured a female lead vocalist. This revelation of the gender equality in up-and-coming rock and roll was a shock me, as I had thought of rock and roll as more of a boys club. But there they were, girls of all ages from all over the state singing their hearts out up on the stage. The other theme was the immense amount of original music these bands played. Most of the bands I have come to love and admire started out as cover bands, and to see all these high school kids writing their own material was inspiring to me, not only as a fellow musician but also as a fellow fan of rock and roll. These bands will be my generation’s mark on music history.

The first group of the night that really caught my attention was Trusting Obscurity from Madison, Ohio. With their hard driving guitar riffs and pounding drums, one does not know where to begin when describing Trusting Obscurity. The band blends the loud and quick tempo akin to the Ramones with the blues-rock fusion of Led Zeppelin, if either bands had a female singer. I would be remised if I was to forget the incredible lead vocalist. Her infinite range, dominating stage presence, and powerful delivery of the lyrics was the exclamation point that brought Trusting Obscurity together. Trusting Obscurity’s musical mission, in their own words, “… we are not a band that is trying to rebel against society or parents or whatever. We aren’t just making music to get a rise out of people. We make music so that music (especially rock n’ roll) never dies.”

The next show stopper from the Rock Off was Drift. Drift was one of two bands from the Rock Off that features Ignatius’ very own Holden Szalek on drums. In essence Drift is loud, raw talent. Even with the rough-around-the-edges sound of a high school band, any lover of rock music can see, or rather hear, right through it and acknowledge the uninhibited potential that is Drift. The only way to put it into words is: Drift is an orgy of music devotion, ambition, and promise. Anybody who was lucky enough to see them live is definitely strumming on a guitar or beating some drums right this very second.

Last but certainly not least of the Rock Off profile is M4. A smattering of 13 year-olds from Erie Pennsylvania, M4 shatters the myth that age equals talent. M4’s lineup of 3 electric guitars plus a bassist gave them the heaviest instrumental section of the whole Rock Off. The sheer talent of their guitar section, and mainly their lead guitarist, 13 year-old Ben Semple, dawned on me during the band’s cover of Guns N’ Roses’ “Sweet Child O’ Mine”. As Semple began picking the iconic guitar intro it became crystal clear to everyone in the audience that he was lightyears beyond any other guitarist his age. As the song progressed onward through the verses I thought that this kid had just memorized the guitar tab through endless nights of rehearsing, that is until he hit the solo. The perfection and precision of every note of the solo cemented M4’s mark on the Rock Off, and in my memory. However, Semple was not the entire band. The lead singer, Audra Miller, was faced with a monumental task herself: match the power of such a strong guitar section with her singing while still maintaining an element of femininity. It is my humble opinion that nobody else in the Rock Off could have stepped up to the challenge the way Miller did. However the group was still a little mismatched, a hard rock group that looks like a boy band with Taylor Swift singing, but not one of them is even an upperclassmen. With all that time to refine their sound, it is only a matter of time till M4 is at Lollapalooza.