Part of Rocky dining hall to be saved for upperclassmen

Residential college masters recently approved plans to convert part of the Rockefeller College dining room into an upperclass eating space in response to a growing desire among upperclassmen for more dining options.

"Choosing Rocky was more a choice of space than of location because upperclassmen live all over campus and so it would be hard to find one dining hall that is close to all of them," said Laura Chiang '05, who first proposed the new dining initiative.

Rocky also has more empty space than other dining halls, averaging forty empty seats per night, said Stu Orefice, head of dining services.

Because of their close proximity to fields and courts, Wu and Wilcox are the most crowded dining halls in part because they tend to attract more athletes returning from practice in the evening, Chiang said.

Orefice also hopes to reconfigure the dining hall by replacing the long rectangular tables with more informal smaller tables and by creating a lounge space in the back of the dining room.

While upperclassmen have always had the option of remaining on a University meal plan, Chiang has been working closely with Orefice and Janet Dickerson, vice president of campus life, since November to create a more centralized upperclassman dining area. She said that so far she has received about 60 emails from students interested in the program.

Orefice estimates that the number of upperclassmen who will remain on the University meal plan for next school year will range from 30 to 80 students, which is about the same as for years past. However, Orefice said he also believes the new dining initiative may lead to an increase in the number of participating students.

"While 38 juniors and seniors remained on the eating plan this year, the publicity for this dining initiative, as well as Laura and Vice President Dickerson's efforts to make this a viable dining option, will probably lead to an increase in student interest," Orefice said.

"We want to provide the students with a different atmosphere in the dining hall," Orefice said. "We want them to be able to come in and relax."

Student increase

Even with the increase of students using the Rocky dining hall, Orefice does not anticipate that there will be any problems with providing efficient service to students.

"With our current estimates the number of interested students does not appear to be significant enough to create a problem with flow in the dining area," Orefice said. "Also we do not expect that the students on the plan will dine at Rocky for every meal—few students do. But it is nice for them to have a gathering place."

Plans are also underway to provide various extracurricular opportunities to the students similar to those already available in the residential colleges.

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"Because there aren't very many social opportunities for upperclassmen on the University meal plan we are working with the administration to organized intramurals, dances, study breaks, trips into New York City, and other social opportunities," Chiang said.

The dining initiative will also serve as a model for the four-year residential college system to open for the 2006-2007 school year, Dickerson said.

"We believe that both the dining and social aspects of this initiative will allow us to better plan for the integration of upper and underclassmen in the four year residential colleges," she said. "This is an important model for what those residential college may look like."