A group of freshmen with excess meal swipes at the end of every week will have the opportunity to expand their eating horizons come Spring 2009.
Duke Student Government approved a resolution at its meeting Wednesday night that will allow 10 percent of the freshman class to use their missed breakfast credits at the Great Hall on West Campus.
"Normally, when freshmen miss breakfast, they get a $6 credit toward lunch that they can use in the Marketplace," said freshman Pete Schork, an athletics and campus services senator. "The problem though, is that a lot of [freshmen] have classes on West during lunch time and can't make it back to East [Campus] to use their credits."
Students will be selected at random to take part in this pilot program and will be given both entrance and exit surveys to gauge how their campus dining experiences are affected. The program's success will be judged based on survey results and any increased revenue the Great Hall receives during the Spring semester.
"The hope is that the Class of 2013 will be given the option to eat lunch at the Marketplace or in the Great Hall," said DSG Executive Vice President Sunny Kantha, a senior. "We are running this trial so that we can present a strong argument for this to happen."
At the meeting, Vice President for Student Affairs Larry Moneta spoke about several projects the Office of Student Affairs has in the works.
One such project is improving recreation options, especially on Central Campus.
"We are working on a recreation space on Central sooner rather than later," he said. "We are getting close to a point where I can commit to you that come Fall, we will have better fields [in place of the tennis courts]."
Moneta also announced an environmental citizenship program in conjunction with the Nicholas School of the Environment that will help advance environmental awareness and literacy among students.
In other business:
DSG praised the success of its revamped online syllabus archive.
"Right now we have just over 400 syllabi in the archive," said sophomore Ben Getson, an academic affairs senator. "There is a pretty broad range of syllabi in the archive, and all we want is more people to contribute."
The Web site has seen a surge in traffic over the last week.
"After blasting [the Web site] and the Chronicle article, we have had about 1,000 hits each day," said Vice President for Academic Affairs Chelsea Goldstein, a junior.
DSG also announced the launch of Duke Deals-a new program that will offer weekly sales at Duke University Stores. Freshman Lauren Pfeiffer, an athletics and campus services senator, has worked over the past few months with store managers to work out a schedule of sales that will correspond to events on campus.
"Hopefully around exam time, Red Bull and coffee will go on sale," she said.
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