Open all three dining centers

Written by Nathan Hansen Friday, 05 February 2010 08:00

For the most part, the dining centers are doing a great job. The staff are friendly and helpful, the food warm and delicious, and the choices have been getting more and more diverse since my days as a freshman here at NDSU.

But one thing that I miss from freshman year is the ability to go to any of the three dining centers on the weekends. If I was in the ECE labs doing homework or the library I could bop over to the Union Dining Center for supper instead of trudging across campus to the Residence Dining Center.

It makes a lot of sense to have all three of the dining centers open on the weekends instead of just having the Residence Dining Center open. 

The first fact is we are paying a lot for our meal plans, and the cost increase of our meal plans has been outpacing inflation for years. So we are paying more money for a third of the service we had a couple of years ago.

We also have a huge student population compared to my freshman year. And until the recent construction we have not added any extra dining space for these students.

So Dining Services is raking in more money – a lot more money – now that we have moved to continuous dining since even people who don’t eat three square meals a day but want a meal plan have to pay full price. Where is all this money going, and why is it not used to make the Dining Centers more convenient for on campus students?

Take the ladies of Dinan and Burgum for example. These halls have a mostly freshman population who must have meal plans, but they live on the ass end of campus from the RDC. They have shuttles that will take you to the dining centers, but it still makes living in these residence halls a pain on the weekends.

And has anybody noticed that even with the promises of Dining Services that continuous dining will alleviate congestion at the dining centers that on the weekends its sometimes standing room only at the RDC? Even the Union has congestion problems during the week when all three of the centers are open.

One of the greatest benefits of the dining centers was the ability to have three menu options, with the Union having its vegetarian option. We lose that on the weekends, having only the RDC open.

Nathan is a senior studying mathematics.