endless queues to eat at the canteen of the Valbonne International Center

In Valbonne, students complain about the waiting time to access the canteen. A delay that can extend to 1 hour, the length of their lunch break. In addition, meals are no longer paid for à la carte, which forced parents to pay for the entire meal at the beginning of the year.

Endless queues. You have to wait 40 minutes and sometimes even an hour to eat at the canteen of the Centre International de Valbonne (CIV). So to eat, you sometimes have to make do.

“Our teachers agree to release us at different times so as not to have too many queues,” explains Hamza, a second-year maths-physics preparatory student.

“For example, our maths teacher dropped us at 8pm and I remember I had to queue for 40 minutes, which meant I was able to eat at 1pm and I had to be in class at 1:20pm,” he continued on BFM Nice Côte d’Azur.

According to Penelope, Lili-Swan and Sumeya, second-year physics-chemistry preparatory students, “it’s a bit of a lottery”. “Sometimes we’re lucky, if we’re first, we can eat. Here, we waited 20 minutes (…) there must have been about forty people in front of us”, the young girls specify.

A room in a boarding school on condition that you pay for the canteen

A huge wait for sometimes incomplete meals and especially meals that do not adapt to everyone’s diets. This student was forced to refuse a room in a boarding school, because he would then have had to pay for the canteen where he cannot eat.

“We were told this at the last minute, so I’m trying to find accommodation because I live about 40 minutes to an hour from the CIV,” complains Tommy, also a second-year maths-physics preparatory student.

“What happened is that there were a lot of people who had to agree to pay for the canteen even though they don’t eat there because they have allergies. It’s completely unfair,” he complains.

Students take their food

Some parents even have to organize to provide food for their children so that they can be in class on time even though they have paid for the canteen.

“For breakfast this week, he brought biscuits, sliced ​​brioches so he could eat without having to queue and sometimes not being able to access them, so he eats breakfast in his room,” explains Pierre Bernasconi, father of a second-year maths-physics preparatory class student.

The region says it is working on these problems and has announced that it wants to review the seven-day formula.