Long-awaited improvements for on-campus dining may finally be a reality.
Conversations over the summer between the Student Government Association and Chartwells, the food service that provides Auburn's campus dining, have led to an extension and standardization of the fall dining hours.
"You had things like Lupton, and you know Lupton was closing at 2:30, but Chef's Table in the Student Center was closing at 3. So we said, 'Can't we just make all lunch venues close at 3?'" said Kirby Turnage, SGA president. "So it's things like that where there's a consistency. Breakfast is at 7, lunch venues close at 3 and dinner venues in the Student Center now close at 9. The important thing is that there's a consistency across the board."
Gina Groome, marketing director for Tiger Dining, said the changes initiated by the SGA had already been set in motion by student feedback through the Tiger Dining website.
"We do a lot of student surveys and we get constant feedback on our website, so it all kind of happened at the same time," Groome said. "We were gathering feedback and then the SGA came to us, and it was just kind of a big collaborative thing of all of the information coming together."
Research and negotiations with Chartwells were primarily conducted by Turnage and Chris Osterlund, SGA executive vice president.
"So the short-term goals that we kind of set were consistency and then variety and availability," Osterlund said. "What we did was just looked at it from a plan of action--what can we do to get these accomplished within the summer?"
Chartwells gave the SGA a proposed schedule for fall dining hours and over the summer Turnage and Osterlund conducted a survey to gather information about student preferences before making their suggestions.
"The mission statement of the SGA is to promote and serve the student--the individual student," Turnage said. "So we really wanted to do diligence and not just complain just for the sake of complaining and say, 'Hey, these hours are bad--fix them.' We wanted to go out there and get the empirical data to support our claims."
Turnage and Osterlund polled between 350-400 students. Participants in the survey included the SGA summer Cabinet, Panhellenic presidents, Residence Life and freshmen who lived on campus during the year.
Data from the survey was used to create a tentative revised schedule for Chartwells.
"A lot of students indicated to us that, 'Hey, I like eating ABP (Au Bon Pain) for dinner, but it closes at 7, and I don't eat dinner until 8,'" Turnage said. "So we asked the question, 'Why should a student--if it's a mandatory meal plan--why shouldn't a student have the choice of when to eat dinner?' They shouldn't be restricted by the meal plan. They should have the opportunity to eat when they want to eat."
Osterlund said variety, as well as consistency, was a big issue when making revisions to the schedule.
"When we were looking at the venues and availability, we wanted to make sure that there was more than just one place open and there was a difference in what they were serving," Osterlund said. "If it's dinner then there should always be choices, not a choice."
By the end of the summer, a final version of the fall schedule was agreed upon and released.
"The hours, across the board obviously, have increased drastically, and I think it's going to be a good short-term improvement to the program," Turnage said.
While students will enjoy increased dining options and availability this semester, the SGA is not finished with the subject.
"I think long term we're going to partner with the Division of Student Affairs and we will study the dining program as a whole, pull in different stakeholders again, like Res Life, but study it more in depth and figure out what's working for students, what's not working and more importantly where does the program need to go," Turnage said.
Recommendations for change may include topics such as service, hours and types of venues and payment programs. According to Groome, Chartwells plans to continue negotiations with the SGA.
"We'll definitely be keeping them in the loop for sure," Groome said. "There's a lot of changes happening down the road and we'll definitely want student feedback for that, because we do eat it every day, but it's not for us, it's for the student."
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