By Adriana Campos
When Eric Sinclair returns to Northeastern from his co-op job every day, the first thing he does is hit the dining hall. It’s not the tempting food or his growling stomach that compel him to stop off at Stetson East as soon as he gets back on campus. Sinclair, a middler finance and management major, arrives home at West Village A at 5:45 p.m. most nights, leaving only a little over an hour and a half before the dining hall closes at 7:30 p.m.
“I have to go right when I get back from work. I change my clothes and go straight to dinner usually. I can’t do much before going,” he said.
Because Outtakes and the Stetson West dining hall are closed during the summer semesters, students with meal plans are forced to find time to eat lunch and dinner during Stetson East’s shortened hours. The dining hall is open from 7 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. on weekdays, and 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. on Saturdays and Sundays.
Like Sinclair, other students spending their first summer on campus have found themselves rushing to beat the evening lockout, or spending their cash and dining dollars at other campus eateries and skipping the dining hall entirely.
“It’s ridiculous that it’s only open until 7 when there are so many students here,” said Pete Ozols, a middler mechanical engineering major. “Seven is just way too early to close. There have been a number of times where I was looking to go, but it was like 7:15, which isn’t that late for dinner, and I had to go buy my food somewhere else.”
Returning home late from co-op during the first half of the summer prevented Ozols from eating lunch or dinner at the dining hall on most nights, and has left him with over 60 meals to use by the end of August. Now in classes, he still thinks it will be hard to use up all of his meals during the day.
“With only two hours between classes, I’d rather go back to my apartment than go waste time at the dining hall. And then it’s only open until 7 o’clock so if I meet with people to study or do homework, it doesn’t leave much time to go to dinner.
“We pay so much for our meal plans; we should be given the convenience of having better hours and more options,” Ozols said.
Even students who are not on co-op during the summer have found it hard to take full advantage of the dining hall.
Danielle Currier, a sophomore medical laboratory science major working on campus as an orientation leader, receives free housing, seven meals a week and 900 dining dollars as compensation for working with incoming freshmen as part of the summer orientation staff.
