Thursday, May 1, 2008

Wilson Dining Hall closed for the weekend.

Along with every other student living in Wilson, I received this email from Laurie Hebditch.

Dear Wilson Students,
Due to construction, the Wilson Dining room will closed starting Friday, May 2 - Dinnertime and will be reopen in time for lunch on Monday, May 5. All of you are heartily invited to eat at the Butler dining room during this time.
Best,
Laurie

Noticeably absent from the email: a promise of paw points for the inconvenience.

It's not that I expect paw points whenever something extremely bothersome occurs, and it's not the University's fault, but I do expect equal treatment. So why is it that students in Whitman received paw points as compensation? I realize that Wu is just a couple steps away from Wilcox. But Whitman Dining Hall isn't actually that far from any other Dining Hall.

Additionally, we are bothered for four more meals than those who live in Whitman. And we have to deal with the noise of construction daily, as well as the conversations of the construction workers as early as seven in the morning, as do the kids in Bloomberg and Scully-- but at least they have air conditioning to console them.

Also absent from the email: an apology.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Perhaps because your dining hall is being closed for improvements that will ultimately provide a better dining space for you, so they're doing you a favor? Whereas ours were closed to allow outsiders to eat there. Don't automatically jump to conclusions and take the easy way out by blaming all your problems on Whitman.

Anonymous said...

I don't think that making Wilcox as good as the other dining halls should be considered a "favor" so much as what we expect. (I don't expect amazing dining, but I do expect dining to be equal on campus.) Additionally, pre-frosh as "outsiders"? How about "guests on campus"?

Anonymous said...

Wu Dining Hall was closed for 2 different Fridays due to Alcohol Coalition discussions. We never received and compensation. The bias towards Whitman is unbelievable, and completely unjustified. $15 for not being able to eat dinner at your dining hall?! Give me a break.

Martha Vega said...

Hmmm. While I'm not going to complain about my $15 latte subsidy from the Admissions office, I have to say I was very surprised that we were given any compensation at all. Now, Whitman is slightly different from Wu in the sense that we don't have a twin dinning hall...

However, I expect that the real reason Whitman students were given $15 while the Butler students got nada, had mostly to do with who was responsible--Admissions office v. AC...

Anonymous said...

1915 Hall has to deal with the construction, Wu/Wilcox loading dock, and has no AC either...

Anonymous said...

I am a Wilson resident who actually emailed Laurie Hebditch back about that- all I received was an invitation to set up a meeting with Master Browning, whose time I wouldn't want to waste with such a seemingly trivial (though fundamentally inequitable) issue.
there are actually two separate issues, one of which is the princeton preview closings- (whitman for eating purposes, wilcox to set up blackbox) for which whitman was compensated, and we were not.
Because of construction, however, wilcox has been closed for the past couple of fridays as well as this whole weekend. It's harder to claim compensation, but some accommodation would be nice- esp. given that butler was really crowded last friday dinner.

Anonymous said...

Let's pretend, just for the weekend, that we are like any other college student outside of Princeton and walk more than a dozen steps to the dining hall.

Anonymous said...

Procter Hall, the GC dining hall, has been closed for events several times this year and we've never gotten any Paw Points either. And we *are* further away from other dining halls.