<p>DS freshman move-in is Friday, and if I’m reading the website is right, it looks like the dining halls are closed move-in weekend. Is this right?</p>
<p>I guess you could argue they don’t all have to open on the 16th, but a predictable and growing student population will be arriving throughout the weekend, and by noon Saturday there will be plenty of hungry students roaming the quad and residence halls.</p>
<p>I’m not sure I understand the thinking behind this.</p>
<p>Per the recent issue of Greek Chic:
Friday
10:30-12:30
Lakeside
Fresh Foods
Burke</p>
<p>6:30-8:30
Lakeside & Burke</p>
<p>Subway - Sat & Sun 11:00-7:00</p>
<p>Julia’s Market - 7:00am - Midnight</p>
<p>Starbucks - 8:00am - 5:00pm</p>
<p>Fresh Foods - Sunday 7:00am - 3:00pm</p>
<p>Didn’t think about this until now but I assume a dining hall is open during AA/OA week.</p>
<p>Hold on, I’ll give you the dining halls open for the whole week. It is in Greek Chic for the girls going thru rush.</p>
<p>[Bama</a> Dining - Locations and Hours](<a href=“http://bamadining.ua.edu/pages/locations.html]Bama”>http://bamadining.ua.edu/pages/locations.html)</p>
<p><a href=“http://bamadining.ua.edu/information/Dining%20Room%20Policies.pdf[/url]”>http://bamadining.ua.edu/information/Dining%20Room%20Policies.pdf</a></p>
<p>Sunday - Friday
Looks like Lakeside, Fresh Foods, and Burke for lunch </p>
<p>Dinner is all at Lakeside Sun - Wed
Thurs- Fri are Lakeside and Burke</p>
<p>So nothing until dinner on the 11th? Did I read that right? S moves in aug. 9.</p>
<p>Lakeside is open for dinner and lunch on the 10th.</p>
<p>A long-standing complaint of mine. You will have THOUSANDS of families on hand and Fresh Foods won’t be open? They did that last year and it was incredibly frustrating.</p>
<p>^^^^ I’m already frustrated and I’ve never experienced this. My D will be there on the 8th. Girls start moving in on the 8th for rush. One more added presure, where to eat on the 8th and 9th. Sure, some parents will be there to take care of their special snowflakes. Still… Maybe that is what they are thinking. That mom/dad will be wanting to spend meal time with their student and not many will use the dining halls. Maybe they have done it before and found they did not have the numbers they thought they would.</p>
<p>There are many places to get food within walking distance of campus. There are also places who deliver food to campus. They also have a refrigerator and microwave in their rooms. Lots of options other than the dining halls.</p>
<p>Bill, which Friday is your son moving in? </p>
<p>Is there no longer a master schedule that you can see at a glance which halls are open at any time?</p>
<p>Many of you will find that your kids will quickly wander to The Strip and eat there.</p>
<p>The point isn’t that there are other options available, the point is that this is a case where more on-campus resources need to be made available to be utilized (especially for freshmen students living on-campus and forced into the investment of a meal plan). Not every student has the financial means to dine out regularly because UA can’t be bothered to have a location open.</p>
<p>Fresh Foods is a nice facility with plenty of capacity, but even then the line is often out the door at lunchtime and I find it incredibly difficult to believe with the irregular schedule kids keep that the ROI in keeping it open longer and at dinner time isn’t feasible. The inability to find a seat during a Bama Bound session should be a key indicator of how packed it would be at a time like move-in weekends and other peak periods.</p>
<p>I just don’t see dining services keeping pace with enrollment, and the fact that they are offering a retail meal “bonus card” to upperclassmen is proof to me they know it. It is going to get ugly if they don’t do something before Presidential II comes online, and adding another cafe in the new rec center there isn’t going to cut it.</p>
<p>If you build it (or have it already built)…</p>
<p>If dining out is expensive, send your student to the store to pick up some things he/she can eat in the room or bring some food from home for the first few days and keep it in the dorm fridge. Whether the student is eating at home or eating at UA, you are still paying for his food somehow.</p>
<p>The meal plan contract states it starts August 11. Even if the halls were open earlier, those meals would not be included in your semester meals.</p>
<p>The point isn’t that there are other options available, the point is that this is a case where more on-campus resources need to be made available to be utilized (especially for freshmen students living on-campus and forced into the investment of a meal plan). Not every student has the financial means to dine out regularly because UA can’t be bothered to have a location open.</p>
<p>Wait, I’m confused. Are you talking about once school starts or before? Typically a meal plan won’t start until around the time school starts. Bama usually allows usage of a meal plan for several days before school starts, but to expect to use it for many days before school starts probably isn’t reasonable when you consider that a day’s worth of meals at a hall is about $20.</p>
<p>Edited to add…</p>
<p>The meal plan contract states it starts August 11. Even if the halls were open earlier, those meals would not be included in your semester meals.</p>
<p>YES! So those arriving earlier won’t be able to use their meal plans anyway.</p>
<p>I just don’t see dining services keeping pace with enrollment, and the fact that they are offering a retail meal “bonus card” to upperclassmen is proof to me they know it. It is going to get ugly if they don’t do something before Presidential II comes online, and adding another cafe in the new rec center there isn’t going to cut it.</p>
<p>Of course they know it. They had a similar problem before Lakeside dining was opened so they allowed retail dining in the Ferg Food Court as “meal plans” until Lakeside was built. That’s not unusual. So, again, they’re doing a similar thing until the Presidential dining hall is built (and another dining hall by Eng’g). </p>
<p>As a mom of two former Bama students, I can tell you with near-100% assurance, your child will find a way to eat off campus here or there if he/she has any access to money in any way. Within about a month after school starts, the dining halls lose a lot of their crowdedness because the pledges start eating at their Houses and other kids start eating more and more off campus.</p>
<p>***The first meal served for the fall semester will be dinner on Sunday, August 11, 2013. **</p>
<p>All dining facilities will close after lunch on Wednesday, November 27, 2013 for the Thanksgiving break and reopen on Saturday, November 30, 2013 at the regularly scheduled operating time. Our last meal for the fall semester will be lunch on Friday, December 13, 2013. Spring semester meal plan service will begin on Sunday, January 5, 2014 at 4:00 p.m., and end on Friday, May 2, 2014. All Bama Dining facilities will be closed March 21-28, 2014 for Spring Break.*</p>
<p>My S will actually be a returning student this fall, so I am familiar with his eating habits and the associated trends.</p>
<p>In my opinion, the whole point of a meal plan for an on-campus student is to remove the nuisance of that daily life component (especially for a plan imposed without option on a freshman student). I am fully aware of the options, but why should such a student pay for the meal plan and then be expected to stock their fridge in duplication??? They should have an overabundance of dining options, and as an afterthought at that, not a plan your day around the full moon when Fresh Foods or Bryant is open. Campus food service should not be a profit center, nor operated as such.</p>
<p>I also haven’t heard yet is a coherent defense for why Fresh Foods does not have expanded hours of operation. I simply refuse to believe that with 30,000+ students, the demand isn’t there even for a commuter that has a late afternoon class and would like to grab dinner in a centralized location before leaving campus.</p>
<p>This is to say nothing of AT LEAST having extended hours during a peak period like move-in weekend when you have the impact of 15+ Bama Bound sessions all at once and the influx of people associated with it.</p>
<p>Don’t get me wrong, I think UA is doing a splendid job, but this is an area (along with transit services) where there is much room for improvement.</p>
<p>I also haven’t heard yet is a coherent defense for why Fresh Foods does not have expanded hours of operation. I simply refuse to believe that with 30,000+ students, the demand isn’t there even for a commuter that has a late afternoon class and would like to grab dinner in a centralized location before leaving campus.</p>
<p>The issue is that commuters often don’t have meal plans or may only eat there at lunch time. If they want to eat, they probably eat retail. If there were a real demand (numbers wise) for Fresh Foods to be open later, it would be.</p>
<p>M2Ck are you saying the retail food court will be included in the meal plan? (that would be great but I think I am misinterpreting?)</p>