Davenport Dining Hall is more-or-less packed at dinner time on the La Verne campus. Students living on campus usually gather right before class and even after class to relax, eat and meet with friends over a hot meal.

They are used to grabbing a bite to eat before their night class or taking a dining hall to-go box with them to class, or their dorm.

However with the recent change to the class scheduling block, set to go into effect in the fall semester, this luxury – of eating the biggest meal of the day on their prepaid food plan – may become a rarity.

The new 4:30 p.m. - 6:20 p.m. class time will potentially take away the option for those students who have meal plans.

Most students living on campus opt for the two-a-day plan, and usually use the option to eat lunch and dinner between their weekday classes.

The current schedule, which has some classes ending at 6 p.m. with the next class starting at 6:30 p.m., allows students enough time to eat dinner either before or after class.

However the new schedule may take these meal hours away from students.

There just isn’t enough time between 6:20 and 6:30 to grab even a to-go meal at Davenport and get to a 6:30-9:50 p.m. class.

This is unfair to on-campus students, but there are two possible ways the University could remedy the situation.

One would be to extend the hours of the Davenport Dining Hall so there is a late-night dinner option to accommodate those students who will miss dinner because they have to take a class during this time.

The other option would be to rethink the revamped schedule.

Creating new late-night hours for Davenport seems unrealistic. The extra costs in staffing and food preparation would not fit into the University’s budget and would possibly be passed along to the students in the form of higher meal prices.

Adjusting the class scheduling blocks makes more sense. While the course time blocks have been selected to make the best use of limited classroom facilities, it seems that a small tweak can easily be made. The 4:30 p.m.-6:20 p.m. can move back to the current 4 p.m.-5:50 p.m. time slot, or night classes can begin at 7 p.m. instead of 6:30 p.m.

Either way, it would re-establish the half-hour break in between that students could use to eat dinner and catch up with friends.

There has to be some consideration for the students here. The last thing they want to hear is that they have to change their whole routine and way of doing things because they have to take longer classes during the time they are usually eating.

Even if the University considered this issue, the resulting accommodations will be interesting to see. As this issue is handled, some of the most important stakeholders, the students, should remain informed and be given fair options.

The University needs to redeem itself while it still can. There is still time for them to make changes or revamp their way of thinking on this matter.

Obviously this is an issue that will not only negatively affect students but hurt the other ways of life on campus.

It is important for students to be informed about decisions being made especially if they involve students who are living on campus and are forced to have meal plans.

It is in the best interest of everyone involved to try to save our meal times before it’s too late.