Leo J. O’Donovan Dining Hall has made several changes to its layout for the 2010-11 academic year.
The upstairs dining area has been most significantly altered. The salad and sandwich bar, which used to take up a large portion of the upstairs floor space, has been removed. The wrap station now also serves salads, but it no longer offers a weekly rotation of wraps or any meat options. Students who want to make sandwiches must visit the downstairs sandwich bar.
“I miss the wraps,” Emily Stoiken (COL ‘12) said. “I also miss being able to make my own salad. It’s such a waste of Leo’s workers’ time to be making salad for us.”
The taco bar, once a weekend staple, has been moved upstairs from the downstairs serving circle.
Associate Vice President for Communications Julie Green Bataille wrote in an email that the dining hall has added stations that break up the service lines.
At least one student appreciated the stations’ new locations, away from the salad bar where the lines frequently overlapped.
“They did move the taco bar to a better location,” Greg Rodarte (SFS ‘13) said. “It used to cause a huge traffic jam, but its new spot seems to work better.”
The silverware stations, which were dispersed throughout the cafeteria last semester, have all been removed except for the two large stations located by the entrance to each floor. According to Green Bataille, this was part of a move to centralize the silverware.
Students may have mixed reactions to the new Leo’s, but according to Aramark, the company contracted by Georgetown to run Leo’s, they are getting what they asked for.
“Any changes made in our dining locations are the direct result of student feedback,” Aramark Director of Communications Karen Culter wrote in an email. “We survey students [through the Dining Styles Survey] to determine their needs and preferences, and implement changes based on the feedback we receive.”
Aramark took control of the food service at Leo’s in the fall of 2007, and its contract with Georgetown will be up for renegotiation in 2012.
Executive Director of Campus Dining Services Andrew Lindquist did not respond for multiple requests to comment. Associate Vice President of Auxiliary Services Maggie Bryant could not be reached for comment.
—Additional reporting by El Roberts
