GW Dining officials announced at Monday’s Student Government Association meeting that Shenkman Dining Hall will remain open until midnight during finals week this semester and outlined plans to open three new dining locations in Foggy Bottom over the next two years.

Associate Vice President of Business Services Seth Weinshel said Shenkman dining hall will remain open until midnight — two hours later than its normal Monday through Thursday closure time of 10 p.m. and three hours later than its 9 p.m. Sunday closure time — for the first three nights of final exams, Dec. 14 through Dec. 16. Weinshel also said officials plan to bring more dining options to the Foggy Bottom Campus in the next one to two years, with as many as three new “quick service” options — like the restaurants found in District House — including a coffee shop with selections similar to Buff & Brew on the Mount Vernon Campus.

“One of the things that we know we are lacking on Foggy Bottom is a real coffee shop-style thing,” Weinshel said. “So that is one of the concepts that we’re trying to find the right space for.”

Weinshel said he and other dining officials have heard student feedback asking for more late night dining options and are testing different ideas to accommodate students’ requests, like having later hours during exam periods or certain times of the month based on dining patterns. He said providing more late night options requires “tradeoffs” from officials, who have to balance budgetary constraints and the wellbeing and safety of those who staff the late-night locations with meeting students’ desires.

“We’ve heard from students about late night options,” Weinshel said. “It’s something that we’re looking at, but it takes some tradeoffs to do.”

Weinshel said officials have piloted different late-night programs this semester, including keeping Absurd Bird open until 1 a.m. Thursday and Friday, though he said officials are considering discontinuing the extended hours because students aren’t utilizing them as much as they expected. He said Absurd Bird only sees an average of 16 orders a night during its extended hours from 11 p.m. to 1 a.m., which he said is not enough to justify keeping it staffed during those hours.

Officials closed District House and University Student Center dining venues on weekends starting this semester, which they attributed to lower foot traffic on weekends. Weinshel reaffirmed that reasoning Monday, saying dining locations serve about 10,000 meals a day Monday to Thursday compared to only 5,000 to 6,000 on Friday through Sunday — a boost from the figure a University spokesperson provided in September when they said GW was serving 3,000 to 4,000 meals a day on weekends.

Students have requested late-night dining hours since dining halls first launched in 2022. In the spring 2024 SGA elections, students said dining was a top priority they wanted to see addressed by future officeholders — especially extending locations’ hours. Prior to the fall 2024 semester, officials announced they would extend dining halls’ hours until 10 p.m., up one hour from 9 p.m. the previous year, following SGA advocacy.

The SGA also launched an investigation into dining in 2024 after officials closed most dining options entirely on campus during the fall semester’s finals. The investigation ultimately criticized officials for closing resources to students they had already paid for, with SGA senators saying they would meet with Weinshel to ensure it doesn’t happen in the future.

Weinshel said officials are in discussions with companies that facilitate robot food delivery on college campuses, like Kiwibot, whose small boxy robots deliver food from campus dining locations to students’ dorms, though he said there are still some details to be finalized with companies before bots hit the streets. Weinshel said introducing robot delivery could help meet students’ demand for late-night options because they will be able to bring meals to students without them leaving their dorms.

Kiwibot and Grubhub — GW’s delivery and pickup app partner — partnered in 2022 to bring robot food delivery to college campuses, though Weinshel did not specify if Grubhub would facilitate the partnership.

Weinshel said officials have been auditing dining halls regularly to ensure staff are complying with the proper menu schedule set by dining officials and campus chefs and have had to remove some staff this year due to noncompliance.

“Primarily this semester we’ve seen some of those menuings get adjusted, and so we’ve corrected that, and we will continue to monitor that to make sure that it’s installing the right menuing that we put in place,” Weinshel said.

Still, he said dining’s staff retention rate rose significantly to 73 percent this year, up from 43 percent last year and 23 percent in 2023. 

Weinshel added that GW Dining has served 645,676 meals so far this year across all locations — including the campus Chick-fil-A and Panda Express, which combined account for about 99,000 meals or about 15 percent — compared to 574,078 meals served at this point last year, a more than 12 percent increase. 

He said GW’s three all-you-can-eat dining halls — Thurston Hall, Shenkman Hall and Pelham Commons — still accounted for about half of all meals served but saw a slight drop in use, from 307,531 meals served at this point in 2024 to 294,320 served so far this year, about a 4 percent decrease. Weinshel attributed the downtick in dining hall use to opening options on Foggy Bottom’s campus, like the Mitchell Hall Chick-fil-A.

Weinshel, who also oversees the University’s housing, said officials are hoping to condense the timeline for housing registration going forward so they can better utilize empty rooms and leave fewer students on the waiting list. He said officials will launch housing registration at the beginning of the spring semester, with the goal of having students assigned to next year’s housing before spring break as opposed to early April after the break.

Weinshel said officials are looking at ways to provide graduate students — who currently have no on-campus residence options — the ability to live on-campus in the coming semesters, eventually hoping to have designated spaces for graduate housing on campus. He said moving assignments earlier will allow officials to find empty space to offer graduate students while they work to find a more permanent solution.

Officials previously housed graduate and law students in The Aston for years until 2019 when they moved juniors and seniors in as Thurston Hall underwent renovations. Officials ultimately opted to close and sell the building in 2022 to the D.C. government, who converted the former residence hall into an unhoused shelter.

Following The Aston’s closure, the SGA passed a bill in 2023 calling on officials to reinstate a residence hall for graduate students, citing difficulties especially for first-generation and low income students securing off-campus apartments.

“One of the things that we are trying to figure out is how do we go about utilizing the current inventory that we have, and if we have space available, let’s offer that to grad students,” Weinshel said.

SGA senators also passed a bill authorizing a survey the SGA will send to students about campus safety and transportation starting next week, asking questions like if they have felt unsafe on campus due to the presence of National Guard troops or Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.

Students began reporting a rise in guard presence on campus and instances of troops accessing restricted University buildings. A University spokesperson confirmed to The Hatchet last week that officials have actively met with National Guard officials to reaffirm the University’s guidelines about accessing private space and clarify boundaries where troops are permitted to patrol. 

SGA Vice President Liz Stoddard said SGA Sen. Mehrshad Fahim Devin (SMHS-G) resigned from his position in the senate due to a lack of time as he enters his clinical phase of medical school. Devin marks the fourth graduate student senator to leave the SGA this term, including two who Stoddard removed for absenteeism.

“He has been a fantastic partner and a fantastic leader, and I certainly wish him all the best,” Stoddard said.

SGA senators also unanimously approved the nominations of Munyaradzi Petricia Dzimunwe, Temur Tutarashvili, Nicole Smith and Ernest BK Chambers to fill graduate at-large seat vacancies and first-year Shengyuan Fang to fill an undergraduate at-large seat vacancy. The SGA Senate converted its remaining vacant seats to undergraduate and graduate at-large seats to be filled by any student in the specified academic level at its last meeting.

The SGA will hold its final meeting of the semester Dec. 5 at 7 p.m. in Duques Hall Room 151.