As spring break comes to a close, facilities at Saint Mary’s College, Holy Cross College and the University of Notre Dame return to their regular hours for students. Over the break, a number of resources across the tri-campus community closed or reduced their hours in response to fewer students, leaving many at Saint Mary’s and Holy Cross facing the closure of dining facilities and reduced library hours.
Assistant director of Noble Family Dining Hall Dan Patterson noted a variety of reasons for these schedule changes in a statement to The Observer.
“Dining halls close over breaks due to low student demand,” Patterson said.
Patterson added that many other projects are pushed to breaks so as not to interfere with the normal dining hall hours.
“Breaks play a large role in the maintenance of the dining hall. We try to hold off as much work as possible so that it doesn’t interfere with regular dining,” Patterson said. “We are also able to do things like detailed cleaning, including emptying coolers and freezers on a rotating basis to defrost and clean condensers.”
These reduced hours apply to many other tri-campus facilities, including North Dining Hall, Duncan Student Center, Hesburgh Library, Saint Mary’s Cushwa-Leighton Library and Holy Cross’s McKenna Library. South Dining Hall, LaFortune Student Center, Noble Family Dining Hall and Siegfried Dining Hall were also closed throughout the week.
In a statement to The Observer, Matt Palmer, associate vice president for Integrated Marketing and Communications at Holy Cross College, wrote that the school continues to provide for its students despite limited hours.
“While a smaller number of students remained on campus, we aimed to ensure that core spaces and essential services remained available to support their academic and personal needs, with staff present,” he wrote. “We also work closely with our tri-campus partners to communicate available resources for students who stay on campus during breaks, including study spaces, dining options and other support services.”
Joe Thomas, director of the Cushwa-Leighton Library, said that limited hours and less students allowed the librarian team to jump into more initiatives.
“We’ve, over the past couple of years, done a big weeding project, where we’ve gotten rid of some older texts that aren’t as useful as they could be and tried to replace them with newer materials,” Thomas said.
These closures have worked well overall, according to Thomas, who explained that Cushwa-Leighton Library has not received much pushback over the reduced hours in recent years.
“I think we’ve had fairly sensible opening hours, given the students’ need for access to the library. We haven’t really had complaints about our hours. If we did, if there was an issue, we’d want to take it seriously and maybe make some adjustments,” Thomas said.
Megan Kraer, a freshman athlete at Saint Mary’s, remained on campus over fall and spring break. She said she received one free meal a day from the Saint Mary’s athletic department, and drove with the team to pick up any other food.
Kraer said the library closures did not affect her much, choosing to study with teammates in the dorms instead.
“We kind of just studied as a team in peoples’ dorm rooms, so I didn’t necessarily have a problem with the [changes in library hours],” Kraer said.
Madison Cox, a sophomore at Saint Mary’s, returned to campus Friday evening. Cox shared that she was not heavily affected by the closures, as she returned toward the end of the break, but said she struggled to plan ahead with the limited hours.
“There wasn’t a lot of communication about [the dining hall hours]. They didn’t send the flyer until right before we left for spring break, so I didn’t know what I was doing for meals and stuff. But overall, it wasn’t too bad, and I was happy that they opened it for Saturday dinner and Sunday brunch.”
Saint Mary’s senior Ellie Walters stayed on campus working on her senior comprehensive project for all of break.
“There weren’t many options, so I found myself spending quite a lot of money just eating out,” Waters said.
With limited dining options on Saint Mary’s and Holy Cross campuses, students w encouraged to use Notre Dame’s dining options that remain open, as well as other options open on each campus. For Saint Mary’s students, Patterson said the 1844 Grill remains open with limited hours and that Notre Dame dining facilities are available for student use under the Saint Mary’s meal plan.
Although North Dining Hall was open over break, Walters said her schedule did not give her enough time to travel there to eat, and Kraer experienced similar problems because she doesn’t own a car.
“For the dining hall, it was closed. So, it was very unfortunate trying to ... get to places that were open, like Chick-fil-a and Chipotle — it was hard,” Kraer said.
