To: Dr. Vincent Boudreau, President of City College

From: Daniel Ignacio, Student from City College

Subject: Cafeteria Adjustments

Date: February 5, 2019

The purpose of this memo is to inform you that the cafeteria in the North Academic Center is lacking a lot of things that are aggravating most students. The goal is to try to come up with some solutions to make our place of eating, communicating, and relaxing a better setting.

Summary

Overall, the school is far too big to have one main cafeteria for all the students. We need to consider the crucial parts that needs to be improved such as the lack of space and tables, outlets, and students coming from the lower grades.

Discussion

The cafeteria provides us for three main purposes, sitting down to eat and drink, socialize, and to get food, drinks, or other necessities. However, the cafeteria lacks space to provide all these things for students. There are many students who are sitting on the floor outside the cafeteria or are sitting on the stairs, which both are very dirty. In addition, the food area is far too big which leaves a lot of space for the cafeteria to expand. Not only that, there is a corner filled with microwaves that takes up far too much space than it needs. Lastly, before the entrance of the cafeteria, there is a large room with a lot of space, however, there are about 5-8 vending machines that are in the middle, which I think is very unnecessary because it blocks students from entering the cafeteria, only providing two pathways around it.

For the outlet situation, a lot of students like to eat and study at the same time, which is not a problem. However, most students use their laptops or phones to do their homework, read articles or assignments, or write papers. This leads to a lot of charging to keep their devices charged to complete their work. The cafeteria lacks outlets or plugs and the room is very big. In my knowledge, there at least ten outlets out of thirty plus tables. Although the school provides outlets outside of the cafeteria, but most people get uncomfortable eating and studying without a table or in the library.

One main idea that I personally don’t agree with is sharing a cafeteria with the lower grades (high school students). Since they have their own building, they need to have their own cafeteria. I think I can speak for a lot of the college students, but for me, I tend to have long breaks around 11am to 2pm and that is when the lower grades have their lunch break. During this time, a lot of the lower grade students come to the NAC (North Academic Center) to socialize and eat. This prevents a lot of the college students who have class and break in the building to go to the cafeteria and eat.

Recommendations

There are some solutions that my friends and I came up with to improve the problems of the cafeteria. First, for the lack of space, we should remove the second cashier and move it next to the first cashier facing opposite of each other. However, the area of the first cashier is the entrance to the food area, but it’s a good thing we moved the second one because it creates a bigger entrance in the middle of the cafeteria and space for at least four more tables. Also, we should move the microwaves next to the coffee maker to at least provide three more tables to that corner. Lastly, the big room where the vending machines are placed, we should remove those vending machines and move it against the wall, not in the middle. Second, for the outlets, they need to provide more plugs into the pillars and maybe consider putting outlets in the floor, like in the library. Lastly, there should be a second cafeteria inside the high school for the lower grades to eat in which leaves more seats for the college students.

I personally would like to propose a meeting to talk about these solutions and adjustments to improve the cafeteria. Give me a call or email to further discuss.

Phone Number: (917)-533-3629

Email: danielignacio724@gmail.com (preferred) or dignaci000@citymail.cuny.edu