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On Tuesdays and Thursdays last semester, Veer Talreja, a freshman living at McNutt Quadrangle, wouldn’t get back to his dorm until almost 9 p.m. He was tired and hungry by the time he returned after a long day of classes. However, by the time he was ready for dinner, Talreja said McNutt Dining Hall was closed, leaving him stranded for food options.
Dining halls are many students' main source of food, especially for those who live on campus. Because IU’s dining halls close at 9 p.m. or earlier on weekdays and 8 p.m. on weekends, many students with demanding schedules, like Talreja, lack meal options when they most need them.
"I was left buying dinner from DoorDash almost every night," Talreja said.
Ordering outside food often took a toll. Assuming Talreja spent around $15 per meal on DoorDash two times a week, he added roughly $600 a semester to the roughly $5,500 meal plan he already paid for.
IU says it prioritizes student health through various wellness services. Current dining hall closing times, which can leave students hungry or spending their own money on food that may not be sufficient, do not align with that priority. For IU to meet its responsibility to keep its students healthy and happy, administrators should extend dining hall hours.
In my first semester, my classes ended at 8:30 p.m. When I reached my nearest dining hall after classes, it was closing, with employees having already taken away most of the food. So, like Talreja, I ordered meals to my dorm multiple times a week, spending almost $600 extra during that term. This habit was unsustainable on top of the meal plan that I, like all IU freshmen, was already required to purchase. If the dining halls were open even an additional half hour, I would have saved a lot of money last semester.
However, some students don't take issue with dining halls' current hours.
"Being open until 9 itself is very late," Tutku Sabuncu, another freshman, said. "Most traditional American families from Indiana eat dinner from 5 to 6 p.m."
Sabuncu said students who leave class as the dining halls close can use their meal swipes to get food from campus restaurants before their late classes to reheat or save for later.
There are many restaurants on campus, including the poke bowls in Hodge Hall, food court in the Indiana Memorial Union, and Yalla in the Godfrey Graduate and Executive Education Center. However, these restaurants close no later than the dining halls. In fact, most of them close somewhere between 3 p.m. and 8 p.m.
"You have to consider it from the perspective of the workers who are working these long hours," Sabuncu said.
Extending dining hall hours would cost the university additional money through spending more on wages for workers and extra food, while only a small population may use the dining halls past 9 p.m. Additionally, the workers may feel burnt out if they were to work more hours with classes the next day. To compensate employees for this extra workload, IU might have to increase the cost of meal plans per semester if it were to extend dining hall hours.
However, if the university were to invest in keeping the dining halls open a bit later, it could be worth it to save the students from spending so much of their money ordering food.
There is an alternative option: shared kitchens in IU residence halls. Some of the dorms, including Walnut Grove, Willkie, Spruce Hall, Collins LLC, Ashton Center and Teter Quad, offer kitchens or kitchenettes for floor-wide use. But not every building offers the amenity of a kitchen. My residence hall, McNutt, for example, doesn’t have a kitchen. Therefore, right now kitchens are not a universally accessible solution to dining hall access.
Ultimately, the campus hours are a complex issue with sensible arguments on both sides. While concerns about staffing, cost, and practicality are important to consider, they don't fully address the challenges many students face in their schedules. Students are balancing long classes, jobs, and extracurriculars that may last until the evening.
Keeping dining halls open until 9:30 p.m. would help make campus life a little easier for a lot of students. According to the website for the Office of the Registrar, IU offers a 50-minute class block that ends at 8:45 p.m., and a 75-minute class block that ends at 9:55 p.m. By the time students enrolled in one of those blocks get out of class, they’d be without dining hall options. If IU is holding classes until such late hours, they should ensure those students can access food once they're finished learning.
If IU cares about supporting affordability, accessibility and health on campus, it should push back dining hall closing times. That small change could make a big difference.
Samantha Shanker (she/her) is a freshman studying media advertising with a minor in business.
