Undergraduate Student Government looking to implement hot meal vending machine

Oct 14, 2024

A look inside Traditions at Scott dining hall. USG is currently working to implement hot food vending machines around campus for late night meals. Credit: Lantern File Photo

While restaurants along North High Street might be open late, on-campus options are limited once the sun sets.

Ohio State, with the assistance of the Undergraduate Student Government, is looking to remedy this, possibly with a late-night hot meal vending machine, which could be piloted as early as this coming semester. Bobby McAlpine, USG president and fourth-year in city and regional planning, said this idea came from the continued concerns he’s heard about late-night dining while talking to students on campus.

“Students would come by and tell us what they had qualms with campus about, what they liked about campus, what they didn’t like about campus, and we would just add [them] to [a] document and believe it or not, [late-night dining] was one of the main things people just wanted,” McAlpine said.

Madison Mason, USG’s vice president and fourth-year in political science, said a vending machine is one of the best options considering the labor involved in on-campus dining facilities.

“Keeping dining halls open later would be really difficult for student workers, and we didn’t want to put more stress or more of a burden on people who are already doing great work, and are also students,” Mason said.

Ohio State Traditions locations — Scott, Kennedy and Morrill dining halls — are currently open at 7 a.m., on weekdays and 9 a.m., on weekends, closing between 8 and 9 p.m., depending on the location and day of the week. Currently, Sloopy’s Diner and Woody’s Tavern are the two facilities open the latest, each closing daily at 10 p.m.

McAlpine said USG has already allocated money toward the potential vending machine project after he and Mason found a unilateral call from students for more options.

“It was just taking our own experiences with dining and asking and getting a general consensus from students about, would you be interested in something that was a later night option, to which we got a resounding yes, absolutely,” Mason said.

USG then discussed how late-night dining could be implemented on campus by looking at what other universities were doing, Mason said.

Ohio State previously expanded options in 2019, including a pizza ATM in Morrill Tower where students could buy a 10-inch pizza with swipes, dining dollars or BuckID.

Now, the university is looking to extend the options to more than just pizza with the hot meal vending machine.

“It is a proposal USG has brought to us and we are working with them on it to see if it’s feasible and makes sense,” said Dave Isaacs, communications and media relations manager for Student Life.