College extends Grille hours on Sundays and Mondays

Dining Services will expand the operating hours of the Grille to 5 p.m. to 12 a.m. on Sundays and until 12 a.m. on Mondays beginning this month.

Old Chapel has been privy to many complaints from students about the lack of dining options on campus this semester, particularly on Sundays and Mondays. Vice President for Administration Tim Spears noted the important role such student input played in the making of this decision.

“It’s certainly helpful to hear from students more clearly about … what an inconvenience it is for them not to be able to get a hold of food and drink on Sunday and Monday nights,” he said. “But it’s also the case that it’s taken us a while to work towards a certain staffing model.”

In order to do expand hours at the Grille, Dining Services needs to hire additional staff, a process that Spears reports will begin this week.  It could take up to two weeks to hire new staff, so the plan is to expand Grille hours by the end of the month. If the hiring process is particularly quick, however, this could occur sooner.

“Let’s face it: you can’t open these places until you have the adequate staff,” Spears said. “It’s taken time to figure out what sort of staff is going to be necessary for running the Grille, MiddXpress and Wilson Café together at a particular time.  We’ve been working through a lot of different staffing issues, and it’s long and complicated, but I think we’ve got a handle on it now.”

Spears announced the plans at the Oct. 11 meeting of the Community Council.

Out of concern for what has become a hotly debated issue, on Oct. 10 the Student Government Association (SGA) passed a resolution to examine the Grille hours and their reduction’s negative impact on student life. According to SGA President Riley O’Rourke ’12, before Spears’ announcement the following day, the SGA was willing to take definitive action to address the situation.

“If they do not change it soon we will pass something else, and if we have to we will pay a student to stay in the space so we can at least get the room open for people to work in,” O’Rourke wrote in an e-mail. “It is embarrassing that a school like Middlebury does not have a [dining operation] open on Sunday or Monday. Also, it is ridiculous that there is no place to get food in this town after 9 p.m. on those days.”

O’Rourke gives voice to widespread student concern, which Spears hopes the new plan for the Grille will “remedy.”

In another development affecting the College’s retail operations, Spears and Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer Patrick Norton have definitively moved to open the Juice Bar in January 2011 as a student-run organization.

In an all-student e-mail sent out this week, Spears outlined the process whereby the contract for managing the Juice Bar will be awarded. Interested students will submit their proposals as part of a competitive bidding process, with the strongest application receiving the contract. In December, the winner will be announced, and in January the Juice Bar will commence operations as a student-run organization.

“It’s an effort to try and get the Juice Bar up and running, and give an opportunity to some students to do something interesting,” Spears said.

Spears likened this idea to what occurs at the Bunker: another “student-managed space that operates within [Freeman International Center], a licensed building, with students working for the College.”

In addition, Spears indicated that such an approach may be used in the future to harness student innovation in other areas of campus.

“We have these challenges and issues on campus — why not bring students into the equation, tap into their talents and introduce these professional and entrepreneurial opportunities?” he said.