USG aims to improve dining halls

Revitalizing the Butler and Wilson dining halls, procuring buses to next week's Harvard football game and improving residential life were topics of discussion at last night's USG meeting.

Sophomore class senator and student-dining services liaison Mike Wang met last week with representatives from Dining Services and from the Butler College Council to address Wilcox' and Wu's dwindling number of patrons.

"The general idea [behind] getting people to go to Wilcox and Wu is not competing with Whitman and Rocky/Mathey, but rather specializing and filling the niche that they don't," Wang said.

Some ideas to address the dearth of diners included giving Wu a crepe station, milkshake machine and sushi bar, Wang said.

Directors of student life (DSLs) from four of the six residential colleges attended the meeting to discuss event planning and issues pertaining to residential colleges.

The DSLs — a post that was created this year — said they have been striving to define and juggle their various roles, which include supervising RCAs, handling crisis situations, addressing disciplinary matters and programming student life.

"It's going to take a while before the DSL position really takes hold in the University community," Whitman DSL Mentha Hynes-Wilson said.

One difficulty they face, the DSLs said, is that they are new to campus and thus largely unfamiliar with Princeton student life.

"I'm looking forward to hearing what the USG thinks works, what needs to change and how we can help," Wilson DSL Michael Olin said. "It's been a whirlwind and a very steep learning curve for all of us."

The DSLs said they were particularly interested in how to cater to the entire University community while establishing each college's unique identity.

Senate members recommended spending college budgets on food-based events to bring students together. They also emphasized the value of slightly more intimate events instead of college-wide study breaks.

Hynes-Wilson agreed that events featuring tasty snacks are a key way to help residential college members get to know each other. "Whitman is going to emphasize food, fun and fellowship," she said. "We are really trying to appeal to the whole food aspect to lure people in."

Get the best of the ‘Prince’ delivered straight to your inbox. Subscribe now »

The DSLs also discussed their other ongoing projects. Butler DSL Mindy Andino said she wants to address concerns about the lack of a Butler-Wilson community due to construction in the Butler Quad and dining hall disparities.

Hynes-Wilson, meanwhile, presented planned changes to RCAs' roles. With the four-year college system in place, she said, RCAs will need to reach out to sophomores and juniors without trying to assert authority over them. "The whole idea is to have an integrated community," she said. "We're thinking of this as incremental. It's not going to happen overnight."

USG president Rob Biederman '08 also discussed a recent email survey the USG sent out asking for student feedback about what its priorities should be. Preliminary results after the first day, he said, suggest most students seem to favor less frequent but larger social events over frequent small ones.

The USG is also launching several new programs this month, including a cafe at Dillon Gym that will open for business either this week or next. Officers also said the USG DVD program will be reopened and that the USG may sponsor buses to Harvard for the Oct. 20 football game.