After two years of attending this university, I consider myself fairly settled down and knowledgeable of the campus.
I could find all my classes the first day without walking to them beforehand, I’ve found all my favorite nooks and crannies in which to study and I can even navigate all the floors of the library.
What I still need to constantly check, however, is the dining schedule here on campus.
The hours of operation are all fairly standard Monday through Thursday. But as soon as the weekend rolls around, the dining schedule becomes not only impossible to remember, but impossible to work with.
After a long week of classes, I’m always unpleasantly surprised that I can’t celebrate with any of my favorite dinners: pizza at Pandini’s? Nope. A wrap at Café Verde? Nada. How about Honeycomb or Woodstock? Again, no. Most dining options close around 3 p.m. at the latest on Friday and don’t reopen until 4 or 5 p.m. on Sunday. In fact, out of the 28 dining options listed on the university’s website, a slim seven are open at all on Saturday. And if you prefer not to eat fast food, you’re really limited to only Grand Market Place, Gibbes Court Bistro, Bates and Einstein’s.
For those students like myself who prefer to have a meal plan rather than cooking at home (because, let’s be honest, ramen and Easy Mac get old fast), the minimum that you have to pay is $781 per semester. Those growing guys and gals that prefer three meals per day end up spending $1,575. Freshmen living on campus don’t even have the luxury of choice; they are required by the university to have at least a 10 Meal Plan, which burns another $1,310 in their pockets.
However, when on-campus options are slim, students are often forced off-campus. And while several restaurants are now accepting Carolina Cash, that does not fix the problem. I love Moe’s as much as the next person, and I am more than willing to spend my money there, but in the back of my mind I know that I’m wasting a perfectly good meal swipe. So not only am I throwing away perfectly good money, but I’m spending more on top of it.
I realize that the dining employees deserve breaks during the weekend, especially after the hoard of students that flood the dining halls during the week. However, I am not asking that everything be open all the time at the whim of the students on campus — goodness knows we would, and do, all gladly snack around 3 a.m. — and it is impossible to ask the employees to dedicate their entire day to the dining operations. But for the money that we are spending on dining services, we deserve more weekend options.