The Line: To Join It or Draw It

BY ERICA CONDON

Staff Reporter

Class starts in five minutes; you think there is time to spare to grab a coffee, but as you approach Outtakes, you see that the line is out the door. Do you risk being late to class by waiting in line, or do you try to survive without your morning coffee?

Many college students live an on-the-go lifestyle and waiting in lines can interfere with their daily schedules. Students like junior Maeve Lydon are frustrated with the amount of time spent waiting in line for food at Sacred Heart University.

“I think most of the time is a bad time to get food on this campus,” said Lydon. “They either need to step up on the way they get the food out or hire more employees.”

Junior Del Driscoll offers a slightly different perspective, observing that there are certain times when student feeding frenzies especially prolong the process of getting food.

“Linda’s has hotspot times where you can’t even go in, like late at night during dinnertime,” he said.

Before it opened in the fall of 2017, Driscoll believed that JP’s Diner would be a great benefit to the campus, providing students with more food options. However, Driscoll’s views have since been changed.

“I thought the whole point of putting in JP’s was to give students more food options and to decrease the waiting time for food, but when they opened, the hours got cut down at Linda’s, which defeats the purpose,” said Driscoll.

Instead of adding more dining halls, what else can the university do to decrease the lines all around campus? Perhaps the dining vendors should invest in an online ordering service.

Many eating establishments near campus, such as Starbucks and Dunkin’ Donuts, have already begun using mobile ordering systems. Both Lydon and freshman Ally Brown agree that ordering on-the-go could alleviate the lines on campus.

“I do think that on-the-go ordering will make things more efficient if there was a person there to just do on-the-go orders while other employees work on orders to stay,” said Brown.

“On-the-go mobile ordering would make things so much easier,” said Lydon. “With mobile ordering you could have two separate lines, one line where people pick up their food that they ordered online and another line for regular orders.”

Alternatively, students like Driscoll and junior Ally Plezia have figured out their own ways to avoid dining rushes on campus. By learning when the rushes are the worst, they can plan ahead to avoid places where the queues are regularly bad – although even that may not be possible when you need a quite bite during the fifteen minutes between the end of one class and the start of another.

“I think the lines are the worst at Outtakes between classes,” said Plezia. “I think they have to be the worst on campus.”

Sacred Heart currently has eight dining venues, with a ninth on the way:

– Outtakes and 63’s, both in the main academic building.

– The café in Matura Library.

– Linda’s, at McMahon Commons.

– Einstein Bros. Bagels, in the Martire Center.

– JP’s Diner, on Upper Quad.

– Balance Kitchen, at the Center for Healthcare Education.

– The Market, at West Campus.

– The Peak, opening soon at Christian Witness Commons.

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