Students of Iowa State, how many of you can relate to running full speed down the streets with a heavy backpack pounding against you as you race to the residential dining center only to get just inside the door and see the closing gate hit the floor?

You are starving and all you had been able to think about all day was a nice bowl of pasta or cheeseburger.

You look down to your cell phone and see that the time is 7:00 p.m. You can see other students inside eating.

A worker walks past and you politely ask if they will make an exception and let you inside. You even offer to pay double!

They shake their head no. And your only other option is a bag of chips and a pop from the C-Store.

Although my experience was not quite this dramatic, I have been in this situation more than a couple of times. Fellow students can be seen daily arriving the dining centers at closing time and are not allowed in to eat. Does this seem a little absurd to you?

We students are paying good money to eat in the dining centers.

And if the residential dining centers are your main source of food, you should be able to eat whenever you want!

Iowa State should run on a continuous dining schedule.

Student life is busy! Classes, teams, quizzes, work, hygiene, clubs, exams, friends, sleep, homework, fraternities and sororities, talking to mom and dad, papers, exercising and studying are some things that are expected of students on a daily basis. Eating is one of the most important things in a students’ day, but it often comes second to other activities.

We try to squeeze it in, and sometimes it just does not fit. Having a continuous dining schedule would help students feel more at ease. Students have enough on their plates and by not having to rush to the dining centers some stress would be relieved.

Other universities across the nation, including the University of Iowa, practice continuous dining. Benefits are well explained in the article “A Revolution in College Dining.”

“From early risers to nighthawks,[…] students with nearly any eating preference can find dining contentment at colleges and universities [with continuous dining services],” the article said.

The main benefit described in this article is that it is so accessible.

Every student needs to eat, and every student has a different schedule.

A continuous dining schedule caters to the students most basic need and life schedule.

It obviously is a preferable system if so many universities continue to use it.

When asked if the set current hours of the dining service have anything to do with becoming a more “green” university, Jill Magnuson-Arroyo, associate director for residential dining, said, “The customer is our main focus when establishing hours although we are not insensitive to the green theme.”

Some people believe that by limiting the hours of the dining centers the university is saving electricity, money and food. By doing this, they are “going green.”

But it is the job of the dining centers to feed students, and be available to them! If the student is the most important focus, then expenses should not be an issue.

Additional food would not be wasted in switching to the continuous schedule. In fact, even less food would be wasted because more students would be able to make it to the dining centers for their meals.

The same amount of food would be prepared, there would just be fewer left-overs. Less food being wasted is an aspect of the “going green” theme.

Another “green” issue is the amount of excess electricity that would be used in order to support a continuous schedule.

The extra $7000 per year that it would cost to run a continuous service dining center is comparable to student tuition for one year, which is about $6000.

Having a continuous schedule would be one more thing to draw in undecided students. The extra cost of electricity would pay for itself and then some!

More workers would need to be hired if the hours were extended. But that should be looked at in a positive way.

With the ultra-low economy these days, people are looking for work.

There would be more opportunity for students to get work study hours and there are certainly people in the Ames community looking for employment as well.

The benefits of moving from a set hours schedule to continuous schedule in the residential dining halls would far outweigh the costs at Iowa State University.

Students are the first priority at this university and the hours the dining centers are available to them should reflect that.

Kara Fisher is a freshman in early childhood education.