I ONLY had about 20 minutes until my next class, and on the walk back from the AFC the other day, O-Hill seemed like a perfect option for a quick bite to eat. As the building came into view, students were milling about outside the entrance. It wasn't until I had almost reached the building itself that I realized these students were standing in line to enter the dining hall. The lunch crunch, at its mid-day peak, had managed to completely overwhelm O-Hill. Hundreds of students formed a queue that had ran down the stairs, around the corner, and out the very doors of the building -- and it did not look to be moving. With the hope of a convenient lunch fading into the harsh reality of the moment, I skipped out and walked to class hungry.
The University may pride itself on the long list of fine facilities it provides for its students, but O-Hill does not make the cut in that regard. Despite its contemporary looks and colorful interior, O-Hill is sadly inefficient at serving the masses of hungry customers that choke its every corner. The lines at this dining hall are as long as they are sluggish. Traffic jams like the one described above occur with some frequency, and the bottleneck at the top of the stairs only serves to further hinder the process.
The layout of the building itself may have something to do with the long wait times that have become a customary part of the O-Hill experience. The narrow stairs and entrance way limit the ways by which students can enter the dining hall, explained Liz Thompson, UVA Dining's Marketing Manager. Adding more card-swiping stations to alleviate some of the pressure is not an option because of the layout currently in place at Observatory Hill. "We've done about as much as we can [to cut down on delays]," admitted Thompson, "but we're always open to suggestions." Moving the card-swiping machines down the stairs to the open lobby on the floor below the current dining hall entrance could offer more area for additional card-swiping stations, but as one student notes, getting in is only half the battle.
"Getting stuck on the stairs is bad," agrees Matt Walters, a third-year in the College, "but it's not like things get a whole lot better once you get swiped through." Truly, after one enters the dining area itself, the delays persist. It is not uncommon for students to wait 15 minutes for a sandwich, which probably has something to do with the fact that the sandwich counter is routinely staffed by no more than two employees during lunch hour. The hot meals offered by the other counters boast even more depressing delays, and while I like stir-fry as much as the next guy, the prospect of a twenty-five minute wait for a small bowl of fried rice is enough to ruin anyone's appreciation of Asian cuisine.
O-Hill's slow pace is both a test of patience and a problem all its own; with classes that start and end around lunch times, students often do not have the 30 minutes it takes to obtain and consume food at the dining hall, and are forced to scrounge for food elsewhere as a result. At the same time, the delays at each station can create further congestion within the dining area. "It's not fun to wait for food elbow-to-elbow with people," says Walters, "A lot of the time the lines get crossed, too, so you can't even tell how long the wait is going to be." Thompson noted the ribbon stanchions as a way to cut down on this jam, but the maze of ropes is ill-matched to the sheer quantity of people in the dining area.
If the dining system here at the University is concerned with the convenience of the service it provides, Observatory Hill is Ground Zero. There are myriad food options in and around Grounds, but few are as well situated to serve first-year on-Grounds residents a meal en route to classes. The dining hall can be an excellent place to get a quick bite to eat, but only if one can manage to get there at the right times. With classes, errands and the countless other endeavors on which University students waste their time in a given day, getting food should be a time to relax and recharge before jumping back into the fray rather than the crowded ordeal it currently is. New placement of the card-swiping systems would get students in to O-Hill quicker. Additional employees at more popular stations would get students their food quicker and cut down on the masses of people that can form within the dining area itself.
David Infante's column appears Fridays in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at dinfante@cavalierdaily.com.
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