The new dining arrangement for the East End of campus elicited mixed reactions from students as Parkside Cafe at Schnucks Pavilion opened and the beloved Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts café, Etta’s, was shuttered.

Some students said that while they appreciate the variety of food available at Parkside, they weren’t happy with its pricing and location.

“It’s a really cool building,” senior LizAnn Sung said. “The space? Super nice. The food? Pretty decent. The prices? Real high.”

Sung added that the ordering methods at Parkside were counterintuitive.

“I feel like Parkside tried to go too technical,” Sung said. “Sometimes the swipe-y things are confusing. If I’m getting a pastry, I like to be able to just go up and ask for the pastry…It’s so much faster to just go up and be like ‘I want this,’ and they’ll get it for you, versus waiting in a long line where they’re making five other things and then coming to you.”

Junior Celia Gerber thinks the new Parkside Cafe lacks the human interaction that Etta’s had.

“Ordering on screens has become really impersonal,” Gerber said. “You don’t get to talk to any of the workers who all of the students have had a relationship with.”

Etta’s, formerly the only dining area in Sam Fox School, has been replaced with a series of unstaffed kiosks, referred to by some as “robo-Ettas.”

According to Ciara Greene, a junior in Sam Fox, there are logistical problems with the kiosks.

“It’s not always stocked,” Greene said. “They run out of things like milk pretty quickly.”

Greene added that she missed the old food options at the old Etta’s.

“They used to have more fresh fruit, and there’s not really any [now]. They wouldn’t run out of napkins and forks and knives as quickly. And the coffee was better, too,” she said.

Sophomore Elliot Wyatt believes there are pros and cons to Parkside Cafe, specifically when considering factors like convenience and atmosphere.

“I used to enjoy how the original Etta’s was more of a cafe-type setting where you could get pastries and fresh coffee and everything. That was really nice,” Wyatt said. “I will say, it is really nice when you’re working late…it’s really convenient because you can just get something whenever.”

Sam Fox sophomore Paula Perez does not think Parkside Cafe is a convenient replacement for Etta’s.

“It’s harder to get food, there’s super long lines [and] it’s not really that close to Sam Fox,” Perez said.

According to Perez, the function of the space has fundamentally changed.

“Etta’s was always a meeting place,” Perez said. “You’d get food and meet your friends here before classes. It was a space just to be with other people, and now it’s a space that kind of exists, but no one really uses it anymore.”

Perez underscored the importance of the employees in the Etta’s experience.

“It was kind of nice to have a relationship with…people on campus other than the students and the professors. Now [Parkside] is kind of just cold; it doesn’t feel like Etta’s,” Perez said. “I guess Parkside does have more options or whatever, but Etta’s felt like it belonged to Sam Fox.”