Dining Services is currently soliciting names for the new food stations on the South 40, including the servery and new Bear Mart shown in this rendering. (Courtesy of WUSTL Dining Services)

Fascinated by nomenclature? How about food? Fame? Glory? Dining Services is offering Wash. U. students and the surrounding community the opportunity to name next year’s dining options at the new South 40 House.

This process includes two rounds, the first of which is currently open. Anyone can fill out a survey and submit ideas for the names of many stations, opening in August 2010. Stations up for naming are the new Bear Mart and the new food options, including but not limited to the bakery and sandwich station, taqueria, pizza and pasta station, grill station, kosher option, Mongolian grill, Tandoori oven and servery.

On March 19, the committee in charge of choosing names will convene to discuss the suggestions received. The committee members will then start the second round by making a second survey, including their favorite suggestions from the first round in addition to another write-in option in case anyone comes up with any new ideas.

Resident District Manager Nadeem Siddiqui said that the committee first discussed having a theme that people should follow, but then decided that the names submitted can be completely open. The committee decided that students should not be forced to stick to a certain category or pattern, such as “Bear’s ___,” or name stations based on the food being sold.

“Right now, in the first round, it’s just absolutely anything that people want to offer as a suggestion,” Siddiqui said. “We decided in the end we’re going to just try to gauge the interest in ideas of the students, and that will be the starting point.”

Paul Schimmele, assistant to the director of operations, urges students to submit any name.

“I’m just hoping for a lot of good suggestions,” Schimmele said.

Siddiqui believes that students’ incentive to participate is that if their idea is chosen, the station will forever have the name they want it to have.

“It will be there forever, and if they come back as an alum, they can say they chose the name,” Siddiqui said.

Dining Services believes that the naming process is going well so far, with more than 100 forms already submitted before spring break.

Dining Services hopes to decide the station names by the beginning of April. This way, officials can pass this information on to the architects so that they can then figure out how to place the titles at each station.

According to Siddiqui and Schimmele, one name that has already been submitted in the survey—and shows that many students have strong opinions about it—is “Bear’s Den.”

“I’ve been hearing, ‘I have to have my Bear’s Den,’ so I’m sure—well I know for a fact—that that’s one of the names that has been written in,” Schimmele said.

He continued to explain how the name is very important to some students who have “very strong connections to [Bear’s Den]” and that Bear’s Den is “very important to them.” But he also mentioned that there are many new students who don’t even know Bear’s Den.

Students can fill out the form online by going to http://diningservices.wustl.edu/name_it.asp, or they can print out a form and drop it off at Bear’s Grill and the Village Café.