By Isabelle Callan — Contributor

After a year of eating at Dewies and hearing nothing but complaints about food, I began to wonder if that was truly the cost of Dewies. The ubiquitous complaints about food quality are usually unfounded and do little more than show that many students are experiencing life outside of their home for the first time. The real downfall of Dewies is the many hours that are wasted sitting and talking to friends, friends of friends, and friends of friends of friends.

When food and housing are sorted out for on campus students, the most tangible currency that must be managed is time. Between clubs, class, and events there is always something to do on campus. Dewies undermines this by operating as a centralized location for seeing people. If the Gait was open for earlier hours of the day, or if meal cards worked during the day at the Purple Pod, this may be lessened.

         The location of the buildings also discourages students from eating food from Provigo because Patterson is the farthest building on campus from town. This entices Patterson residents to retain their meal plan for convenience.

If students were able to bring their backpacks into the dining hall, this would also reduce the wasted time by facilitating the use of laptops to work. While it is obvious that Dewies wants to prevent theft, the constant circulation of employees should be effective at regulating it.

Attending in between meal periods also incites students to wait and waste more time for hot meals to be served. During the hours between lunch and dinner there are almost no available food options, thereby making students feel pressured to just wait the extra thirty minutes for food to be available.

The inherent time wasting that Dewies carries is something that must be considered when students are looking at meal plans. While one argument in favor of Dewies is avoiding cooking time and meal prep, the quality of the food and total time spent at the dining hall is far more costly.

In addition, during the winter months, students are more likely to spend time at Dewies in order to procrastinate returning to their homes. The cold and harsh Quebec winters leave many students whiling away several hours at a time in the dining hall rather than at clubs or events.

First-year students who live in residence account for an enormous portion of the population at Dewies. There is a possibility that first-years are less likely to get involved in extracurriculars, and instead substitute it with socializing at the dining hall rather than engaging in more meaningful and long-term forms of socialization.