Towards the end of November, outright tragedy struck Americans across the country: Chipotle was deemed to have broken out with Escherichia coli, a bacteria which can cause extreme illness and possibly death when pathogenic.

The outbreaks began in the Seattle area and have progressed to California, Minnesota, New York, Ohio, Oregon, other areas in Washington, and worst of all, Illinois. Chipotle has voluntarily shut down some of their restaurants in these areas in an attempt to rid their meats of the bacteria without causing too much of a panic among their customers.

With a newly opened Chipotle near York, students are conflicted about whether or not Chipotle is worth risking their health over. Some students believe that the virus is harmless and have no problem with eating Chipotle.

“Well, I’ve eaten Chipotle about ⅔ of this week,” says junior Rachel Catalano, “so I think if it was going to kill me, it would’ve already. I’m not too worried because nobody has died from it so far, and so I doubt it’ll affect me much. And if it did, at least I will have died a good way!”

Some students take it a step further, believing that nothing–not even a sickening bacteria–could damage the unbreakable bond between them and Chipotle.

“Well first off, I’d like to say that I love chipotle,” junior Austin Waterwall begins. “It’s my life. I don’t really care too much about the E. coli outbreak, and it’s not going to stop me from getting a nicely rolled burrito with a side of guac and chips every Monday night. Does this make me not want to eat there? Not really, to tell you the truth. I mean, people know what kinds of bad things are in their burgers and fries from McDonalds, and they still eat there, don’t they? Is it worth risking my health over? Yeah, yeah it is. Also, if I had to guess, there probably isn’t too much E. coli going around when you look at it in the grand scheme of things.”

However, other students have lost interest in Chipotle for various reasons regarding the recent outbreak.

“I feel kind of grossed out by the E. coli outbreak,” says junior Lauren Fisher, “and I don’t think I would eat much of it–if any–due to that.”

Although customers have mixed feelings about the situation, Chipotle has tried to play it off as a minor mistake which is soon to be fixed. They have set up an information section on their website to keep their dedicated food fans updated about the current issue, and it has been updated monthly since the first few E. coli cases related to Chipotle were documented.

The most recent statement on the site reads, “Thousands of food sample tests from Chipotle restaurants linked to the incident have shown no E. coli. No ingredients that are likely to have been connected to this restaurant [the first E. coli affected restaurant] remain in Chipotle’s supply system. No Chipotle employees have been identified as having E. coli since this incident began. Since this incident began, Chipotle has continued to serve more than 1 million customers a day in its restaurants nationwide without incident.”

E. coli or not, some customers are eternally devoted to Chipotle and its food.

“If I didn’t have my big ol’ burrito bowl with double chicken and that delicious corn salsa at least once every week, I would probably shoot myself in the foot,” Waterwall explains. “Chipotle has definitely NOT lost me as a customer; I, alone, buy enough Chipotle for all the workers in downtown Elmhurst to support themselves and their entire families, and no little bump in the road is gonna change my love for it.”