West Campus is suddenly the place to be next year at Boston University, as many students are wondering if their housing selection number is high enough to get them a coveted spot in Student Village Housing Phase II. However, one question about West Campus still remains: Will the West Campus Fresh Food Company be able to handle the influx of 544 new students to the area?
Plans to accommodate the extra dining hall traffic are ‘under consideration,’ Housing Director Marc Robillard said in a March 17 interview with The Daily Free Press. But at this stage, plans for the dining hall issue should be nearly finalized. This is the week that students decide where they want to live next year, and one factor in this decision may be whether they want to put up with an overcrowded dining hall.
Already, the West Campus dining hall is one of the most crowded on campus, as anyone who has ever gone to it after 5 p.m. will attest. Robillard claimed that eliminating the Hyatt Regency student housing will prevent overcrowding in the West Campus dining hall because 387 students will be eliminated from the dining system to counteract the influx of the 544 in StuVi 2 required to have dining plans. This is incorrect. Just because the Hyatt will be vacant next year doesn’t mean the West Campus dining hall won’t be more crowded than this year. Not only will nearly 200 more students live in StuVi 2 than the amount that lived in the Hyatt, but these StuVi 2 students will likely be headed to the West Campus dining hall for their meals, as opposed to the Hyatt residents who were no closer to West than to any of the other dining halls.
There is no guarantee that any changes made to Buick Street Caf’eacute;, renovations to the West Campus dining hall or other courses of action will remedy the situation in time for the start of next year. The administration is too late in solving the problem in time for housing selection. Regardless, something must be done, or the West Campus dining hall may no longer be known for having the greatest quality of food, but rather the greatest number of people.
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