SGA achieves extended meal replacement hours

Meal replacements are now available at Samsons because Outtakes, which is what used to be the student store, was removed due to the construction of the new Student Center.

To deal with the crowds brought to Samsons, Bon Appetit limited meal replacement hours to when the cafe was not open. However, this only exacerbated issues with line length, at both the cafe and Samson’s, irritating students.

SGA released a survey towards the beginning of the semester for students to voice their discontent and last Friday president Chris Moore took the results of the survey to Katy Cvitanich, the general manager of Bon Appetit. According to Moore, she understood the need for change to best serve the students and worked out new meal hours with her team.

On Tuesday, Samson’s implemented their new meal replacement lunch hours which extended from 9:30 in the morning to 4:30 in the afternoon. These new hours, however, are instated on a trial basis. According to Moore, in about a month SGA will release another survey to see how the news hours have affected the students.

They are hopeful, however, that the added hours will help solve some of the student issues involving food on campus.

At the start of the year, Samson’s had a strict rule that they would only serve meal replacements during the hours that the caf was closed. This was due to them only having one kitchen to repair every meal on campus in, according to a Lion’s Den comment they posted at the beginning of the semester. However, the meal hours proved to be impractical and inconvenient to students and student employees, especially during lunch rush hour.

“We’ve had to learn to be a lot more fast paced to get through the lines of people when it’s rush hour,” student employee and junior Alyssa Ramos said.

In the meantime, student workers have felt the strain of long lines as they deal with frustrated students trying to get to class quickly. According to junior Emily Eskew, there has been an increased pressure on employees due to the rush hours, which now require attention to coffee and meals.

“There’s a lot more prep necessary by the caf, and because of the lack of Outtakes, we have more employees working in Samson’s at once which can be overwhelming in such a small space,” Eskew said. “It’s an adjustment for all of us, especially since it’s still early in the semester, there’s a lot of kinks to work out and there are a lot of things that are out of the student employees’ control.”