In the past week, the Student Union, in collaboration with the Department of Public Safety and Dining Services, experimented with new hours at the C-Store and a trial shuttle bus to the Riverside MBTA station.
In a series of trial runs, the C-Store held extended hours on Nov. 5 and Nov. 12 from midnight to 2 a.m. and will do the same on Saturday.
In addition, a trial shuttle bus to Riverside MBTA Station on the Green Line in Newton ran on the hour from 12:30 to 8:30 p.m. on Saturday Nov. 12 and will run again this Sunday, Nov. 20.
Ricky Rosen ’14, who leads the Student Union Ad Hoc Dining Committee, ran a student survey early this year asking about student desire for extended hours, Student Union President Herbie Rosen ’12 said.
“Ricky followed up with Aramark about the survey results, and extending C-Store hours became a Student Union initiative. Hopefully it will become permanent,” Herbie Rosen said.
During the Saturday trial hours, at least 300 students showed up at the C-Store, and 220 made purchases, Ricky Rosen said.
“This is about making the lives for students more convenient,” he said. “We got a lot of feedback from students telling us that they were very enthusiastic. This is only the beginning. The Student Union Ad Hoc Dining Committee is planning to examine other on-campus dining locations to see how we can maximize hours.”
Currently the C-Store is open until 2 a.m. on weekdays. It is possible that with overwhelming student support and enough business to justify the cost of running the store, the Saturday extended hours will become permanent.
“Of course we look at customer counts and sales to determine if it’s feasible and makes business sense,” Aaron Bennos, director of Dining Services at Brandeis, said. “But we also look at all the locations as a whole to see what best fits the needs of the students. Not all the information is in yet, but it looks like there was a good turnout during these additional two hours.”
Although Brandeis is still running trial hours for the Riverside MBTA shuttle service run, this Student Union experiment is proving less popular than the extended C-Store hours.
“Students are in love with the idea of the Riverside shuttle, but how often they would use it on a regular weekend is lower,” Herbie Rosen. “We’ll have to work with the Graduate Student Association to find times for the grad student population to use the shuttle. It’s a worthwhile investment, but we need to find the right times to place the shuttle.”
Last Saturday there were approximately 71 students using the Riverside shuttle, according to Herbie Rosen.
“It will be interesting to see how it comes back on Sunday,” he said. “We’ll have to reevaluate then. If we’re going to make a permanent investment of the shuttle, there needs to be more student support.
Following this Sunday’s second trial run, the Student Union and the Department of Public Safety will take steps toward determining whether the Riverside shuttle should run regularly during the next academic year.
“We’re not giving up on the riverside shuttle despite what the numbers say. We’ll modify it to fit the student body,” Herbie Rosen said.
