Overcrowding creates dining hall mess
Thursday, January 28, 1999
Overcrowding creates dining hall mess
DORMS: Despite recent efforts, seating shortage, thefts haunt cafeterias
By Dennis Lim
Daily Bruin Contributor
When Andres Campo went to dinner last September, he did not expect to eat his dinner on the floor, but he did.
Campo, along with five other dorm residents, spent a portion of their night without a place to sit, because the dining halls were so crowded there were simply no tables to sit at.
"We came in to Rieber to eat dinner and it was packed," said Campo, a second-year business and economics student who lives in Sproul Hall. "Everywhere you looked, there were people wandering around looking for a place to sit, but all the seats were taken."
Campo and his friends were later told by dining hall employees they could not sit on the floor due to fire code laws. But they did not offer an alternative for the group.
This year, problems with the lack of seating and lockers have concerned the dining halls, as the number of freshmen living on campus has exceeded those of past years.
Dining Services, the department in charge of the on-campus dining halls, predicted overcrowded conditions, but say they've taken steps to prevent them in the future.
"Last year we were very concerned at the number of students who were going to live on-campus for the coming year," said Mary Niven, associate director of dining services. "We were going to have more students living here than we've usually had in the past."
Steps taken by Dining Services include extending the hours of operation for many of the dining halls, opening of new dining halls and increasing the number of lockers available to students.
"Since we have taken these actions we haven't received that many complaints," Niven said.
David Gharakhanian, a resident of Rieber Hall, said more needs to be done to prevent theft at the dining halls.
After eating lunch at Rieber in December, a month after the installation of new lockers, Gharakhanian came outside to find his backpack stolen, along with all of his books, notes and personal belongings.
"I went to lunch and all the lockers had been taken so I put my backpack on top of the lockers," said Gharakhanian, a first-year pre-business and economics student. "When I came outside, I couldn't find my backpack and neither could five other girls."
To address this problem, Dining Services has doubled the total number of lockers available to students.
Gharakhanian, after filing a report with both the dining hall and university police, discovered that other students at Covel and Hedrick dining halls reported stolen backpacks around the same time.
The backpacks turned up in a dumpster in Westwood three days later - without Gharakhanian's notes, library book and textbooks.
Though the university police does not keep specific records on the number of backpack thefts reported at the dining halls, Nancy Greenstein, a spokeswoman for the university police, said backpack thefts on campus have gone up since 1997. Backpack thefts totaled 973 in 1997, compared to 1,155 in 1998.
"Any time you leave your property unattended, there's a risk of theft," Greenstein said of the locker area outside the dorms. "This is a very preventable crime."
Though Gharakhanian did not specifically blame anyone, he did express dismay at the situation as a whole.
"I don't blame the housing people, the workers at the dining halls or anyone else," Gharakhanian said. "If there's anyone to blame in this whole ordeal, it's the overcrowded conditions, not any one person."NICOLE MILLER
Rieber and Sunset dining halls have experienced over-capacity crowds this year at peak times - usually between 6:00 and 6:30 p.m.
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