Fed up with the Atrium
Published: Thursday, September 3, 2009
Updated: Thursday, September 3, 2009
 "Photo: © 2009 NCSU Student Media")
© 2009 NCSU Student Media
The businesses that comprise the Atrium are a sore subject for the administration and campus dining. They don’t want us to talk about the condition of the Atrium. They certainly don’t ask our opinion.
Whereas dining halls have evaluations, the Atrium does not. I have classes in the Court of Carolina for most of my Tuesdays and Thursdays, and I don’t have time to get from Central Campus to the dining halls. The food options within the Atrium are something like choosing between an electric chair and drowning very slowly.
In the morning the Atrium looks desolate. At lunchtime it is packed like a Tokyo subway. By the time the clerks get to us, they seem to feel like they’ve been working a four-hour shift in the last 30 minutes.
Only one entrance of the back of the Atrium has turnstiles. Hurry up and wait to get French fries. Don’t want French fries? Hurry up and wait anyway. It’s even hard to determine what line you’re in. The Chick-fil-a line mixes with the pizza line and the Little Dino’s line. We all end up apologizing to each other for the intermingling.
Every time I think of bringing a girlfriend or a parent to the Atrium my stomach turns over. Professors who agree to meet with me outside of their offices always choose Global Village. The professors themselves bring their lunches, and they would not be caught dead in the Atrium.
The Atrium is a Happy Meal for what’s supposed to be an adult school. At its very best, the Atrium is a façade and a warehouse, a chicken sandwich made up of just chicken and bread. “How could anyone be angry at that?” Everyone seems to think.
We can do better than a cramped warehouse with terrible food. The businesses on Hillsborough Street compete with the Atrium as does Hill of Beans in the Library. But Hill of Beans is not a restaurant -- it’s a coffee shop. Its brownies and cold bagels are no substitute for real food, not that what the vendors in the Atrium serve is.
The Atrium is not as good as any equivalent facilities on the Duke or Carolina campus. Nor is it good enough compared to any of the other places to eat on our campus. We can do better than this.
Bring your friends to the Atrium during the lunch rush. While you are cramped and jumbled in line, realize that you are cramped and jumbled in line. When you sit down to eat, realize what you are eating and talk to your friends about it. After you’re done, look at everyone else in the Atrium. Listen to the noise level.
Finally, I challenge the absent administrators such as Chancellor James Woodward and student leaders including Student Body President Jim Ceresnak to sit down with me for lunch at the Atrium during the rush and get this dialogue going. We might have to shout over the lunch noise, but it would be a start. Perhaps the best argument for changing the Atrium is that things can’t get any worse.
Because, unfortunately, the lackluster punch line to all of this is that regardless of what we say or what we do, someone is going to eat it.
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