Email from NCSU Dining recognizing my concern

Jake,

I read your article in the Technician today.  I'd like the opportunity to discuss it
with you.  Please give me a call on my cell at 819-8662.

I'm not angry about the article....it is exactly what a student would feel if he
stood in the middle of that mob scene at the Atrium and did not know any of what is
happening with regards the Atrium renovation project.  As it happens, I read your
article on my phone during a break in a four hour meeting with the project managers,
food service designers and architects for the Atrium renovation project.

Your recommendation that students leaders have lunch at the Atrium already took
place last year, and included several of the top administrators of the University as
well.  Jay Dawkins, Peter Barnes, Charlie Leffler, Mike Harwood, Kevin McNaughton,
and probably others I can't recall experienced first hand the overcrowding in the
Atrium.  We received the endorsement to move forward with plans to renovate the
Atrium because of that lunch, and that project is underway.

What is complicating matters today is the Hillsborough renovation.  We are being
overwhelmed in our campus locations as people have limited access to the other side
of Hillsborough Street.  Certainly the Atrium is the last place on earth that needed
more traffic, making a difficult situation impossibly hard.  The situation at the
Atrium with overcrowding is not what students want, and as a service driven
organization...it's not what University Dining wants.

The part of your article I do object to is the statement that University Dining does
not want discussion about the Atrium.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  To
my knowledge you have not contacted us in any way about this and we certainly have
not refused to provide any information you want.  It is through discussion about the
Atrium that we can plan and implement changes that provide a "wow" environment here
at NC State that students deserve.  Your article serves to stoke the fires of
positive change, and that is good, but please refrain from vilifying us as we strive
to take the very action you seek.

I'd love to show you the concepts we're developing, discuss the process we are
following, and hopefully if I do a good job of communicating it you can help me
communicate that to students.  I will also work to improve the overcrowding today as
best I can.

Call me....let's talk.






Randy Lait
Director of Dining Services
University Dining
NC State University
919-515-6347
800-701-4940