When students returned to Grounds this fall, they discovered that GrubHub — their only option for ordering on-Grounds — no longer displayed on-Grounds dining options. Students hoped they could just order in-person and wait for the issue to be resolved. But when UVA Dine announced a new app, WahooEats, was live as a beta test, it was clear that the loss of GrubHub was not temporary. It had been replaced for good. Students regarded GrubHub as functional and convenient, so many felt blindsided and questioned what prompted such a seemingly rushed change. We must look at the introduction and subsequent removal of WahooEats as more than an isolated case — it is emblematic of a system that does not allow students to have a meaningful voice in University technology policy.
The transition to WahooEats was as bad as it gets. Students reported that WahooEats had a clunky user interface, broken features, an inability to link Cavalier Cards and an incessant need to repeatedly log in to change restaurants. These glitches made it nearly impossible to order online. The long lines and wait times that ensued from in-person orders led to frustration for all parties involved — for those preparing the food, those eating it and those opting to avoid the hassle of fighting with the app and not eat at all.
Frustrated with the lack of information provided by the administration, students attempted to dig up information themselves. Soon, students flooded YikYak, Instagram and Reddit with posts about the alleged motivations behind WahooEats. UVA Dine announced on Sept. 9 that they had “heard [us] loud and clear” and that GrubHub would be returning to replace WahooEats. The administration’s decision treated the symptom, not the disease. The core issue wasn’t just a single failed app — it was a governance model that waits for a crisis rather than inviting collaboration.
The University lauds itself as a leader in student self-governance, an ideal rooted in Thomas Jefferson’s vision of an Academical Village where educated citizens would actively shape their community. Before even beginning as first-years, University students are told that they have a unique power to collaborate with the administration, and that students at other universities do not have these privileges. But this compelling narrative quickly collides with a harsher reality, where incidents like the WahooEats debacle reveal a system where student partnership is often an afterthought.
Could this fiasco have been avoided if the University allowed students to collaborate in each step of procuring and developing WahooEats? Let us imagine this world. Students would have had the opportunity to share their experience with GrubHub and what problems they saw, if any. Then, the administration and students could have deliberated on whether there was a need for innovation. Who knows what they would have decided? Even if they agreed that a new app was the right path, student involvement would have ensured that the final product was functional, user-friendly, and secure — in other words, an app that was actually helpful. In this world, students and administrators would have enthusiastically embarked on the process of developing WahooEats.
But even if the decision to build WahooEats was the same, the execution would have been wholly different. Students would have been adamant about the need for data privacy. The University would have been encouraged to be more open with the community about upcoming changes. Ultimately, everyone would win. Students would get a functioning app that they can trust to keep their data secure. The University would avoid backlash and monetary losses from investing in an app they later scrapped.
This failure at the University lands in the middle of a larger, national reckoning over student agency and data privacy. Students across the country lack meaningful technology governance at a time when there are real technology concerns — the mass collection of data, the lack of transparency in how contracted technologies track students, web proctoring services and AI “detectors” that can lead to false accusations of cheating. They fear that campus technologies compromise privacy and perpetuate bias. The frustration over WahooEats is not simply about a bad app — it is the local flashpoint for these national anxieties over privacy, bias and a lack of student agency in a digital world.
Even through all this, the University remains special. It has a culture of student governance that students and the administration deeply believe in. But as the WahooEats incident proves, there is a disconnect between the administration’s actions and the student body’s clear desire to be involved in technology issues. There is a real opportunity here to open the doors of technology governance to students at the University. What is missing is a formal mechanism. Just as a crisis of character led to the Honor System, this crisis of governance demands the creation of a Student Technology Council. This proposal is informed by research conducted by Sloane Lab’s Student Technology Council project and with support from the Digital Technology for Democracy Lab. A new student self-governance organization allows the voices most affected by technology decisions to have a real say in their technology innovation, procurement and governance.
Let us return to that imagined world. An integral part of it is a conduit for student voices — a council makes this imagined world real. Student self-governance innovation can and should happen at the University. This will not only tangibly benefit both the administration and students at the University, but also give a model to other universities so they can reap the same rewards that are sown here.
Celia Calhoun and Owen Kitzmann are fourth-year students in the Batten School of Leadership & Public Policy. They can be reached at opinion@cavalierdaily.com.
The opinions expressed in this guest column are not necessarily those of The Cavalier Daily. Guest columns represent the views of the authors alone.
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