It’s 10 p.m. on a Wednesday, and you’re swamped with work—mounds of reading, a pack of merciless math problems and enough Blackboard discussion posts to make your stomach churn. Empty coffee cups lay littered around your desk in Rush Rhees Library. The situation is bleak.
Four hours later, you let your notebook fall to the ground and slump back in your seat, finished. You trudge out the wooden doors of the library, and as you look across the empty quad, an unmistakable growl cuts the silence. You’re hungry.
You head toward the Susan B. Anthony Residence Halls; you know the Hillside POD is up in there, full of food. But, as you reach the convenience store, your heart drops—it’s closed. Your only alternative is vending-machine fare.
Last year, this wouldn’t have happened. Last semester, Hillside was open until 3 a.m. every night. But, now, the only late-night food stop on campus has had two of its hours shaved off on weekdays.
This change is only part of a whole suite of constraints on student dining. Not only does Hillside close earlier than last year, but it opens later on all days but the weekend, too. Starbucks—usually a haven for studious nightcrawlers—now shutters up at 1 a.m. Friday and Saturday, an hour earlier than before. For most of the week, there are now no on-campus dining options open past midnight or 1 a.m. These changes might masquerade as mere tweaks, but, considering that both of the dining halls and the Commons are already closed by this time, they should be treated as nothing less than significant and welcomed with nothing but scrutiny.
And, the result of such scrutiny is clear: these new dining hours are unacceptable, and they should be changed immediately.
College students are largely nocturnal. It is unrealistic to expect students to consistently be in bed by midnight or 1 a.m., especially given the amount of work an institution of UR’s rigor demands. It is unfair, too, to relegate the needs of students in this way and to strongarm them into either settling for the sparse—and, not to mention, unhealthy—contents of vending machines or seeking nourishment off campus, where they are unable to use their meal plans. Stockpiling food in dorms and carrying around premade meals aren’t feasible alternatives, either.
We realize that Dining Services and SA implemented these changes in good faith and based on statistics, but data does not accurately reflect the effect of these changes on the student populations who rely on late-night dining. Student athletes getting out late from practices or games are especially affected.
UR students deserve wide-ranging access to the dining services they pay for. Returning students deserve the accommodations they’ve had in years past. And freshmen deserve to see the beauty of bustling into an open Hillside at 2:45 a.m., and the security of knowing that it is there in the first place.
We are not alone in our feelings. Since the dining changes were announced, we have heard students across campus voice the same concerns, some begrudging, others steaming. It is inconceivable that any student familiar with last year’s dining hours would support this year’s lineup.
Dining Services can repair its reputation with students through a simple, two-step plan. First, it can demonstrate that it understands the issue in its new policies and the impact those policies have upon students by directly speaking with students that have been affected by the change—something that relevant SA members have stated that they are doing. Second, Dining Services can change back its hours. Anything less would be a rebuke of our student body’s needs.
