By Mylin Batipps
Social Media Editor
After a nearly eight-month shutdown due to repairs, T-Dubs is back and better than ever.
The newly renovated dining facility has an updated serving area, as well as a polished dining area with freshly painted walls and a cleansed glass solarium.
“The new T-Dubs will offer a welcoming décor and will continue to offer the grill, pizza, Mexican food, salad bar and other selections,” said David Muha, the College’s vice president for communications, marketing and brand management.
This is the dining facility’s first major update since 1983, according to Muha.
The renovation of T-Dubs was supposed to only take place last summer before opening to students upon their return to the College for the fall. However, with the rise of plumbing and mechanical issues, repairs slowed down the renovation process, causing T-Dubs to remain closed for the rest of the fall semester and winter break.
And according to Muha, it wasn’t necessarily easy for Campus Planning and Construction to troubleshoot the issues while renovating the space.
“Construction projects have many simultaneously occurring activities, with many tasks overlapping,” he said. “This makes it difficult to attribute cause and effect between any single construction item and the extended duration of the project.”
Furthermore, Muha noted last August that the project would’ve been months ahead of schedule had it been completed before the start of the fall semester. The College and Sodexo originally planned on completing the construction by this month, which means the renovation has actually finished in a timely manner.
Students of the College have waited over the previous semester and winter break to set foot back into T-Dubs and indulge in its classic selections. According to sophomore history and economics double major Conor Reid, the College was not the same without T-Dubs last semester.
“T-Dubs is the very essence of (the College), its lifeblood,” Reid said. “Friendships beyond measure were forged and cemented in a booth at T-Dubs late into the night.”
Reid added that although the Lions Den in the Brower Student Center extended its hours late into the night to compensate for the closing of T-Dubs, it still failed to fill the void.
“(The Lions Den) was missing the partial claustrophobia, the mildly disgusting smells and stark colors, and the buzz of TVs tuned to a myriad of channels all playing movies which looked wildly familiar but you weren’t quite exactly sure what movie it was ... that made T-Dubs the mad and wonderful experience that it was,” he said.
On the other hand, some students, such as senior English major Michael Baumann, were barely affected by the closing of T-Dubs.
“It hasn’t really fazed me,” Baumann said. “While I went pretty frequently my freshman year, I have gone maybe three times in the two years before it closed this past semester.”
This year’s freshmen, however, have never even experienced T-Dubs, unlike most sophomores and upperclassmen of the College. Junior communication studies and interactive multimedia double major Folake Ayiloge said she is interested in how freshmen will receive the dining facility.
“A lot of upperclassmen have been saying the freshmen have been missing out on a key part of the freshmen experience without T-Dubs,” Ayiloge said.
Muha is excited about the completion of the renovation paving the way for future projects, stating that it “has created the swing space necessary to launch the renovation of the Brower Student Center this spring.” Reid, however, has not looked that far and only has his mind on two things.
“My orange juice and chicken fingers, oh how I’ve missed thee,” he said.
