Lunchtime Hubs Are Important For First-Year Students

During my first few months at Barnard, I often found it difficult to develop friendships. When I met someone in a class, I would engage in typical small talk but felt awkward asking her to go to lunch or hang out outside of class. After countless conversations circling around such enthralling topics as the weather, I felt frustrated that my relationships tended to enter a stalemate at the acquaintance stage. Eventually, I found the McIntosh Center—Barnard’s late student center and lunchtime hub that gave me a space to interact with people, develop friendships and feel like part of a community.

If I went to Mac to get lunch and ran into an in-class acquaintance, I felt comfortable sitting down at her table to chat for a few minutes. Doing so allowed me access to a greater network of people. I can’t imagine how much harder it must be for this year’s first-years to make friends and feel a sense of community at Barnard now that Mac is no longer with us. With Mac demolished and the opening of the Nexus still far in the future, there’s no real community center for Barnard students. Java City, one of Barnard’s suggested substitutes for Mac, is small, there are never enough tables come lunchtime, and, even worse, they don’t have grilled eggplant.

Now that I live at 110th Street, relatively far away from other Barnard housing, it’s nearly impossible for me to find another space that fosters a sense of community the way that Mac did. Besides the people I live with, it’s really difficult to maintain the friendships I developed last year. When I want to eat lunch, I’ll grab something on my way to school at Westside Market or Subsconscious. There’s nowhere I can go that would serve as an acceptable substitute for Mac, nowhere I can find friends, community and grilled eggplant all under one roof.

One day last week, I decided to stop at Nussbaum on my way to school and noticed a sign in the window advertising the restaurant’s new acceptance of Flex Points. Initially, I saw this as a great improvement for Columbia, whose bagels pale in comparison to those of Nussbaum & Wu. As a first-year eater forced into buying a Meal Plan, I would have appreciated access to Nussbaum’s salad bar without having to worry about letting my dining points go to waste.

At the same time, more options leads to a diminished sense of community. Thinking about the invaluable role Mac played in developing my social life at Barnard, I believe that a central building for lunching and chatting is essential for the first-year experience. Giving students more options of places to eat is great for our palates, but I believe it will only work against fostering a sense of community on campus, especially for first-year students. For non-first-years, this is not as much of an issue. More dining options is just as, if not more, important that having one centralized dining location once students feel adjusted on campus.

I’m not suggesting that the new Flex expansion plan is a bad idea, but I do think that students will be less likely to visit community centers on campus if they’re free to eat anywhere in the neighborhood. This means that both Barnard and Columbia must work hard to make sure its community hubs will continue to draw in students.

For Barnard, this task is especially difficult considering the fact that a steel framework currently stands where Mac used to be. In light of Barnard’s construction project and the expanded use of Flex Points, I worry that the class of 2012 will have a more difficult time finding community on campus. These innovations put a new responsibility on the schools’ administration. Both schools must make sure that, come September, incoming first-years will have a well-populated, centralized place where they can interact and connect.

The author is a Barnard College sophomore majoring in political science.