By Ryan Wichelns

 

With 13,250 undergraduate students and an additional 3,000 graduate students, at any time the University of Rhode Island is bustling, filled with students on their way to and from classes.

 

College campuses are traditionally self-sufficient, providing their students housing, leisure, shopping, physical activity and food all in one place. URI has made a special effort in recent years at advancing their infrastructure and bettering the environment for it's students. Additions like the Hillside Residence Hall, Anna Fascitelly Wellness Center and the new College of Pharmacy Building have all added to the campus experience. But one area that's lagged bahind, according to students, has been dining. 

 

Although the campus features multiple different locations to eat, only

two of them, Mainfare Dining Hall and Butterfield Dining Hall, are

included by default in all on-campus resident's meal plans. 

 

"Hope is a good size, Butterfield is an OK size for lunch," says Peter

Collins, a Junior Marketing major at URI who has lived on campus

for all three of his college years. "But," he says, "there could be

improvements." Collins points his finger at the limited hours the

dining halls are open. If the hours were greater, he says, students would be freer to go when it's convenient, rather than going at peak times and causing crowding. "There wouldn't be such an overload of students at certain times," he says. 

 

The result? "People are walking around...lapping the dining hall, doign several laps, trying to find a place to sit," Collins says. If you're lucky, you'll spot a group whos just about to get up or you'll find a friend who will give you a table when youre done, but either way, students are forced to wait.

 

URI's Dining Services, however, plans to address this problem.

 

"Theres so much up in the air right now that I dont think people are confortable saying very much," begins Mainfare Dining Hall manager Thomas Cronin, "but we certainly know a lot of whats going to happen." He's speaking about something Dining Services has been working on for years: renovating Butterfield Dining Hall. "Essentially, its to modernize the students perception of what Butterfield is," he says. "Change the stations, update the entire look of the inside of the building, and then the ultimate goal is to expand it by several hundred seats."

 

Butterfield, which currently seats around 370 students would grow to the size of Mainfare, at 580 seats. Along with additional seatin, Cronin hopes changing the appearance of Butterfield will also help balance crowds and make dining as pain free as possible for students. 

 

"If you look at, when you're in here, and you say 'at our busiest point how many people are looking for a place to sit?' and then you did the same at Butterfield...and you combine that amount, and you say 'would 225 or 200 plus seats help eminate that congestion problem or that lack of seating problem?' and the answer would be yes."

 

Although the process is very close to beginning, it has yet to go to bid for a contractor, Cronin says, meaning there is no definite start or end date. However, Dining Services hopes to have construction on Butterfield begin during this upcoming spring break and be completed by the beginning of the fall semester, 2014.