Staffing shortage leads to limited services on campus
Operation hours of multiple dining halls are currently limited due to scarcity of staff on both campuses.
On Jan. 9, the Pandemic Planning Committee in conjunction with dining hall staff announced in an email that on-campus dining would have limited hours. This conclusion was reached after much deliberation from both the student senates and staff.
At SJU, Sexton was closed the first week of classes, and is now back to being open 10:30 a.m. – 8:00 p.m. on weekdays, and 12-8 p.m. on weekends.
On the CSB campus, general dining at both Gorecki and McGlynn’s is from 7 a.m. – 10 p.m., and 9 a.m. – 10 p.m. on weekends. Gorecki closes at 2 p.m. Friday through Sunday.
The common question on everyone’s minds: Why these changes?
The answer boils down to understaffing.
“Currently we have eleven open positions on all of our operations…to put it in perspective, that’s approximately 412 staff hours that we’re missing every week. That doesn’t include student staffing shortages [either],” said Kim Poganski, director of CSB Culinary Services.
Poganski said that these changes are not ideal for staff, either. However, there is a small light at the end of the tunnel for students who enjoy late-night dining.
“When I’ve met with students before… they like the later hours. When we were looking at needing to change our hours of operation, one thing we were really trying to do was to provide an operation still on our campus that was open as late as possible,” Poganski said.
The aim for this decision was to affect the least amount of people for all operations. The most adjustments for Gorecki were done on weekends, where there was the least amount of traffic.
However, as CSB student Samantha Clayman indicates, this weekend revision does not necessarily work for everyone.
“Many students rely on the dining services as their main source of food, especially if they live too far away from campus to go home on the weekends. Most of my friends only have snacks in their dorm, which aren’t a sufficient meal. Driving to the store every weekend simply isn’t a viable option for everyone,” Clayman said.
Clayman highlights an important issue regarding total student accessibility. When taking away hours, students must reroute towards other options that don’t really exist.
Janet Despard, Director of SJU Culinary Services, aims to solve this problem soon, and hopes for Sexton to be open till 9 p.m. again soon.
Despard explained that Sexton temporarily restricting dining ended up being the only viable option for quarantine meals.
“When considering where to prepare quarantine/isolation meals, we needed a location adequate to prepare meals for an unknown number of students in isolation/quarantine…that meant not only space, but also equipment, staffing, loading dock access for receiving supplies, and so on,” Despard said.
Despard, when asked about everything opening fully again, simply stated: “We hope it is very soon.”
In the wake of another surge of COVID cases, that is all students can do as well.
