Oglethorpe Dining Commons is the only dining hall open during Maymester.
Photo by Suha Zakiuddin
During the summer, there are less students on the meal plan.
Photo by Suha Zakiuddin
By Suha Zakiuddin
Because there are fewer students in the dining halls during the summer sessions, Food Services at the University of Georgia shifts its operation gears.
The only dining hall open during Maymester is Oglethorpe Dining Commons, also known as O-House. The other dining halls open for operation in June and July, while O-House closes on June 4.
There are some noticeable differences in O-House compared to the fall and spring semesters, mainly more employees and fewer students.
Unsurprisingly, there are fewer students on the meal plan during the summer, as there are fewer students taking classes and living on campus.
So, why are there so many more employees in O-House?
“May is a whole different kind of thing,” says Cafeteria Manager II Darnell Tate, Sr. “Dining hall employees are on a 12-month contract. When the academic year ends, all the employees move to O-House to continue work.”
The only student employees working in the dining hall during Maymester are Student Supervisors; management cuts down the amount of students they hire because there is less of a need for employees. Student employment starts again in June and July.
The dining hall feeds roughly 3000 students during the fall and spring semesters, but in the summer, the number falls to about 150 to 200. The dining hall also feeds a different group of people.
According to Chantai Meadows, a third-year Magazines major and Student Supervisor in O-House, “the clients are different. There is a mixture of students and camps. Last week a middle school class came.”
During the academic year, Meadows’ responsibilities include making sure other student workers are on task, that they take their breaks in a timely manner and making schedules. Those responsibilities change to just helping out where needed because there are no other students employees to oversee.
Meadows is currently working on a new way to train new student employees. “Right now we are changing the way we train students. Making it more detailed,” says Meadows.
William Lee, another Student Supervisor and a Spanish and Theater major, also discussed responsibilities related to his job. “We have to maintain the floor and manage students,” he said.
Both Meadows and Lee prefer the academic year to the summer term because there are more students.
Lee will also be working on the Freshman Orientation team this summer, which sells the meal plan to incoming students.
One of Food Services main sources of income is selling the meal plans to students, since it does not receive subsidies from the university.
“If we don’t sell the meal plan, we don’t have jobs,” says Tate.
When asked if the summertime was less stressful, Tate shook his head. “The management team works on a different mode of operation, with different goals.”
The goal is to get students to join the meal plan.
“In the fall, there is an influx of new students who are getting used to the meal plan, to college,” says Tate. “[The dining hall] is not just a place to eat, it’s a place to socialize. A lot of students are
not successful because they don’t make a connection to the university. The dining hall is a place to do that.”
Edited by Bailey Keiger
Bailey and Suha,
ReplyDeleteThere's some interesting information here about how the dining halls work in the summer. It's kind of funny that they take all the employees from all over campus and stick them in one place for a few weeks. Good job with quotes and attribution here, except you should stick with the past-tense "said."
There are a number of style issues, though. Here are some:
-- There should be no comma before Sr. or Jr. in someone's name.
-- Don't capitalize a job title like student supervisor unless it's immediately before a person's name.
-- Every number over three digits gets commas, as in 3,000.
-- Don't capitalize generic majors, like magazines or theater.
-- Use parallel grammatical structure when listing things, such as Meadows' academic year responsibilities.
Good job getting a couple of pictures -- can we get some faces next time?