If there’s anything distinctive about college, it’s the weird hours at which people function – suddenly midnight has become the new 7 p.m. and 1 p.m. seems like a normal time to start one’s classes and work for the day. This means that students often find themselves eating at irregular times. Eating the third meal of the day later at night is a regular occurrence and often times lunch falls in between classes and the beginning of homework somewhere in the middle of the afternoon. For some students this isn’t only a lifestyle choice, but also a forced phenomenon that results from packed class schedules from early in the morning until the afternoon. In general, Wash. U. has done a good job accommodating the odd schedules of students by having Danforth Campus lunch options like Subway or Whispers open into the afternoon and keeping places on the 40, like Bear Mart and Bear’s Den, open respectively until the early hours of 1 a.m. and 2 a.m. Despite the general successes of the Wash. U. dining options, there remain a few changes that could make eating more convenient for students.
The first of these changes would be expanding the hours of the dining hall in the Village. Though Village housing was originally made up largely of married and graduate student housing – a population with a potentially slightly more normal eating period – it has become home to more and more undergraduate students throughout the years.
Particularly this year, as a result of the University’s fall housing crunch, the Village houses a significant number of undergraduates who keep the same hours as those living on the South 40. The infiltration of undergraduates into the Village means more people hanging out in the Village and that hungrier students want food after 8 p.m. Sunday through Thursday. If the midnight rush at Bear’s Den is any indication, keeping the Village open later would be profitable for the University and also an asset to students who live on the North Side of campus.
Let’s face it, food is vitally important to late night study sessions and student existence in general, walking across campus to the South 40 in the middle of the night is extremely inconvenient, (not to mention cold) and it seems keeping the Village food venue open later would only benefit Wash. U. While providing students who live on the North Side an option for eating on campus late at night and in the afternoon is critical to many students, opening Bear’s Den or Bear Mart earlier in the morning would help other students. Though being open at this time may not be as profitable as other times because it isn’t a high rush period, there are athletes who really should be able to eat a solid breakfast before they go to practice.
Not only is breakfast “the most important meal of the day,” but for athletes who are burning a lot of energy, it seems especially important. The University should provide some place on campus where athletes and anyone else who might happen to be up at a normal hour on the weekends can eat breakfast. Though providing some food options in the morning is important because some students do have weekend lives that begin before lunch, it’s understandable that the University has been hesitant to do so. Extending the Village hours, on the other hand, seems like one of those rare ventures that would allow the University community to have its cakeand eat it too – past 8 p.m.