MCV students slighted by university services

Sylvia Wertz
Columnist

Most students know someone who lives across the city on the MCV campus. It’s a little bubble of isolated quietness and medical students, only a two-block walk from the School of Dentistry and the Medical Center, complete with a gym, food-court-style cafeteria and freshman dorms.

But options in terms of student services are limited for those few who live within the MCV campus dorms.

One need not mention the hassle of planning a daily schedule around the irregularly timed Campus Commuter. But it should be noted that the commute is even worse on weekends.

Furthermore the bus doesn’t start until 10 a.m., and the last bus that leaves from Monroe Park campus departs at 8:30 p.m. It’s as if the residents of Cabaniss Hall have a curfew, forcing them to awkwardly cut dinners short in order to catch the bus, unless they want to take the chance of using the Security Escort, which is infamous for its waiting times on weekends.

Thankfully, the MCV gym is quiet compared to the Cary Street gym, with usually no more than a dozen people in the main gymnasium using the machines, in the pool or at the ball courts. Unfortunately, the gym’s evening hours are cut short on the weekends, slighting students that want to workout late. It hardly seems to be much of a problem for hours to be extended, especially since Cary Street stays open until midnight. The argument could be made that it’s not practical to have the gym open so late since fewer students frequent it, but if there was a track and rock-climbing wall, students would undoubtedly  be more attracted to it.

But the part about the MCV campus that gets undergraduate residents most upset is the food services. The Jonah L. Larrick Student Center has the best food on both of the VCU campuses and looks fantastic. Yet the only enjoyment of this comes between the hours of 6 a.m. and 9 p.m. on weekdays. To add to that unfairness, students can only get food on the weekend from 10:30 a.m. to 7 p.m.

By this time in the evening, most people are already in their rooms studying and winding down for the evening. It’s hard to really use the meal plans to the extent that they’re intended when our choice for meal plans are already limited. Most of the time it is not worth our time, energy or money to get food from Jonah or take a trek to the main campus.

By that time, there are three different options – two if it’s a weekend. You can either see what you have in your room, take the bus over to Shafer and hope you won’t have to wait too long for the Security Escort or walk three blocks to a Wendy’s and Einstein Bros. Bagels.

It’s nice having the two fast-food chains so close by, but it would be better if Jonah would stay open longer so students wouldn’t have to worry about standing around at night. The university should make better strides to open options for students on the MCV campus.

Recently, more and more attention has come to the Monroe Park campus with beautification projects and events. But what really needs to be done is pushing more funding for better use to  the MCV undergrads, as well as the medical students that also share the campus. There would be more positive feedback and use of the facilities if there were more hours available to the undergraduate students rather than being tailored to just the medical students.

Just because we don’t live on the main campus doesn’t mean we should suffer even minor, inconvenient slights. We pay the same amount of tuition that the Monroe Park students do, and we expect equal services and options.