VCU: You’ve come a long way, baby

The Monroe Park Campus has experienced some exciting changes over the last 12 months, and students are benefiting from improved food quality at the Shafer Court Dining Center, extended hours at the library during weekdays, and new commercial growth near the campus that is expanding students’ dining and shopping options.

Also in the last year, Main Street Station opened to passenger train service for the first time in nearly 30 years, allowing students to catch a ride home from downtown without having to bum a ride. What could be better?

There are a lot of reasons to like VCU this year, and as the city’s slogan says, you might call it “easy to love.” There have been a lot of changes, all of them welcome in helping to improve campus life at VCU. But as far as we’ve come, there is no reason to let up now.

VCU students could still benefit from a more dynamic nightlife than is currently available, and the fledgling commercial growth around campus doesn’t yet rival options available at some of the city’s other commercial centers, like Willow Lawn or Regency Square.

Retail dining establishments are available on campus, but they more often than not fall short of the quality available elsewhere. Part of the problem is that all of the dining facilities on campus, retail or otherwise, are owned and operated by one company.

Perhaps if VCU opened its retail space to competition, enterprising companies might be able to provide a greater variety of dining services, and the university could make more money by leasing out the space. There are a number of restaurants found in food courts in shopping malls, for example, that are nowhere to be found near the VCU campus.

Nightlife is another problem. Hyperlink Caf