Readers,
Welcome back! Here we are on the final sprint to the end of the semester.
With the end of spring break came the end of Chase — at least for me. I will never sit in Chase Dining Complex again as a student (though, thanks to Dining Services, I have kept a piece of the infamous green carpeted wall — and, naturally, will treasure it forever).
People were naturally ambivalent about what this would mean for campus dining options. I was, too — I had nightmares of an over-crowded Emerson and immense student unrest — pitchforks in the Dimple, that kind of thing.
But, in the first week, at least, things have been — well, better. Let’s be honest: Emerson has never been a comfortable place to find a place to sit during peak (read: 12 and 6) mealtimes, and that hasn’t changed. But suddenly, for the majority of our meals, Wheaton students have a grand total of four places to eat lunch, all on the meal plan (and who would have thought walking into the Loft in the daytime would be such a novelty?).
Compare this wealth of variety to before spring break, when we actually had as few as half the options — location-wise, anyway — now available to us. The new options don’t particularly disperse the crowds from any one location, but I can switch it up more easily, and that’s welcome. Or, I can stop by the food truck as I run — late, of course — to a lunchtime class.
The administration should be commended for making this transition as student-friendly as possible. But there must be people who think differently — and we’d love to publish you! Drop me an email at butcher-nesbitt_robert@wheatoncollege.edu if you’d like to agree, sound off, or tear the new dining options apart.
One final note on the dining changes: as an aggrieved upper-campus resident forced to walk all the way to Chase on Saturday and Sunday mornings for weeks on end, it was truly delightful to roll out of my bed in Cragin this Saturday and find myself halfway to food already. (Lower campus residents — I feel your pain. Thankfully the majority of you will be here to experience what looks to be an exciting Chase renovation, so thanks in advance for allowing me this small indulgence.)