Student leaders and University Housing officials discussed controversy Tuesday night stemming from what the two groups called a misuse and lack of organization at two residence hall grills.

On Sept. 5, both snack bars began new hours of operation beginning at 5 p.m. and ending at 11 p.m. The Saluki Grill and Lakeside Deli hours were reduced because students were not using the facilities correctly, University Housing Director Edward L. Jones said.

After polls were taken last year, students said they wanted a place where they could get alternatives to what cafeterias were serving at different times of the day and on a system where they could use their meal cards.

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The intent of the grill transfer program was to provide an alternative or extension to the cafeteria dining program, Jones said. The meal equivalency was established so that residents could get a meal from a grill that is comparable to those offered in the cafeterias especially those residents who missed meals in the cafeteria. It was not intended to be a supplier of bulk food items.

Some students have been seen buying items such as laundry detergent and six-packs of soda on their meal cards instead of buying food that would be close to a cafeteria meal, Jones said.

Due to the change in hours, student workers at the snack bars lost the hours they could work. Paula E. Wilkerson, training assistant for residence hall dining, said she contacted every student that lost their hours of work because of the change.

Out of 21 students two were not available because they found another job, Wilkerson said. I sent four students to Grinnell, Trueblood and Lentz cafeterias. Three went back to Lakeside Deli. However, I left messages on seven machines and they never called back. Two were no longer interested in working in cafeterias, and three were hired but did not show up. These totals are accurate as of last week.

Many students said the major controversy is over who caused the snack bars to be closed. Undergraduate Student Government Senator Jason Barett said there are a lot of questions as to what really caused the reduction is hours at the snack bars.

Students have been told they (snack bars) were being misused, Barett said. But they don’t know how they were misusing them or what is meant by the word misused.’

University Housing is taking some of the blame for the problems at the two places, Jones said.

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It was our fault, Jones said. It was because of internal managing issues that helped create the problems. When I went to the Saluki Grill, my thought was:This is a management issue. There were adjustments that we had to make.

Mike Plocinik, student manager at the Saluki Grill, said everything was working well from his side at the grill and that Manager Mike Jarvis did everything he was told to do.

The problem is not internally with Mike Jarvis at all, Plocinik said. It was when they (housing) changed everything that is came tumbling down. Jones came down and talked to us once to tell us there were going to be changes and then we never saw him again.

Mary M. Morgan, assistant director of Residence Hall Dining, said the problems at the two facilities resulted from no limitations being set at the beginning of the year. The limitations were implied, but not set in stone, she said.

For the last few years the grills have had very little business, until this year when we left it so open-ended for the students to use, Morgan said. I think the student workers were so overwhelmed and excited at the same time because they got the business they had been working towards for a long time, and that is when the problems really began.

The grills were designed to give students continuous service, but they were being overrun, and that caused more problems, Jones said.

The numbers were not down in the cafeterias, Jones said. The issue with these grills seems to be an all-or-nothing, now-or-never situation, and that’s not true. We now have the grills to where they are manageable, and we now have the students trained correctly. And the crowds have gone down.

Some student workers, like Plocinik, don’t feel there was a problem with the snack bars at all.

You gotta be in the mix to understand what is going on, Plocinik said. The crowds are down, yes, but it would be the same at 11 a.m. I don’t see how hard it (the grill) was to manage to begin with. I would like to see Jones and Morgan put on an apron and see how well they would do working here.

Besides the reduction in hours, Megan Fleming and Elizabeth Fulk at the Lakeside Deli were told to fire 16 student workers by an administrative official. However, no one including Morgan, Jones and Wilkerson, know who that man was and why he told Fleming and Fulk to fire students.

I tried to track it back to who would tell them to fire students, Wilkerson said. I thought it could possibly be one of two people who have a history of talking abruptly, and it was neither one. I did talk to Liz (Fulk), and from what she said I still couldn’t figure out who it was. It is quite frustrating that this could happen to our employees. I don’t know if we’ll ever know who or why this happened.

As for what is going to happen with the snack bars, Jones said he wants to look into working the facilities out to a comfortable compromise in the future.

If you’re saying down there (the grill) is what really interests you, then we need to address that, Jones said. There is the prospect of opening the Grinnell snack bar that has been closed the last four years and maybe opening the grills back up during the day. Those are just things we have to look at, not now, but possibly later. Right now, there are things that we have to adjust and correct.