Ellen Hayden
Gateway Residence Hall is pictured on Saturday, March 8, 2025, on the University of Missouri’s campus in Columbia, Mo. The hall is named in honor of the university’s historic past as the first public university west of the Mississippi River.
Many students at the University of Missouri await their next recess from classes. When the time comes, most undergraduates will take time to go on vacation, go back home or visit family elsewhere. However, for students who choose to remain on campus, their options are much more limited.
For a variety of reasons, many of these students don’t have the luxury of returning home or vacationing when class isn’t in session, so staying on campus during breaks is something they must do.
Many of these students don’t own cars and live in residence halls on campus. While on campus, they have the options of Mizzou Market, dining halls, the MU Student Center and downtown Columbia for food and other resources. If these facilities are made inaccessible, students are forced to spend excessive amounts of money to meet their needs or they simply go without. Enobong Offiong, an undergraduate student who stayed in his dorm room at Gateway Hall during last year’s Thanksgiving break, experienced this firsthand.
“I stayed at Mizzou over the break to work… I live far away, so I didn’t want to pay all that money just to [fly] go back for one week,” Offiong said. “Panda Express, the Mizzou Market, Infusion and Mark Twain [dining hall] were the only things I was able to eat on campus and the hours were also kind of wonky too.”
It wasn’t financially viable for Offiong to travel home, but the limited availability of places to eat on campus made remaining at MU an inconvenient choice. The menus at places like Panda Express and The Mark on 5th Street aren’t the most diverse, so it was frustrating for students to be restricted to eating there, especially when the hours were wonky.
“I know it’s hard to get people to work on holidays,” Offiong said. “But for the people on campus, that’s a whole week long of eating Panda Express. Panda Express is also not cheap, so you’re eating Panda like one meal a day because it’s like $10. If you buy two meals, that’s $20.”
Students who stay on campus during breaks understand that it’s difficult to keep primarily student-employed restaurants and dining halls open when most employees are no longer on campus. Still, this can have problematic financial and potential nutritional impacts on students who remain on campus. If tuition-paying students are permitted to stay in their residence halls during breaks, then MU should act accordingly and make sure those students have access to what they need.
MU sophomore Mareia Cunningham stayed in her College Avenue Hall dorm room during the last Thanksgiving and winter breaks due to her job in downtown Columbia.
“I stayed over the break because of my job,” said Cunningham. “ It ended up being easier for me to just stay on campus during break and then go home on those specific days like Thanksgiving.” Cunningham’s employment made remaining in Columbia more practical over the break, but she probably would’ve been able to eat a wider variety of food if she had spent more time at home.
“It depends on the break and it depends on the certain day,” Cunningham said when asked about campus food availability. “This winter break … the only thing that really was readily available for the most part was Panda Express, and of course, you can’t be eating Panda Express like that all the time due to money and just healthy food-wise.”
The limited dining options made Cunningham’s lifestyle more inconvenient. MU takes student convenience into account when school is in session, so that consideration shouldn’t stop when there are fewer students on campus.
Cunningham’s gripes with living on campus during break went beyond the limited dining options.
“Different buildings were closed. If you don’t have personal access to them through your employment, you weren’t able to get in,” Cunningham said. “My favorite studying spots were at times locked or had more restricted hours. The library is available because technically it’s a public library … Instead of being open 24 hours it was only open from like 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.”
Cunningham suspects that MU restricts access to academic buildings to protect against security risks posed by the Columbia community. If this is the case, there may still be ways that students can safely visit their favorite places to study during breaks.
“For the people who are here over the break and who are allowed to be here and have to be here over break, giving them the ability to have access to facilities through a temporary key access would be much appreciated, at least for me,” Cunningham said.
Certain MU student employees and even MU student media members have been given swipe access to rooms and buildings on campus. If MU trusts student employees with faculty-level access to different facilities on campus, then granting similar access to students who stay on campus during breaks may be a possibility.
The MizzouRec is a popular facility that many students staying at MU would appreciate access to. Cunningham cited the “jam packed” nature of the Rec as the reason she doesn’t like going. Breaks could be a golden opportunity for students to enjoy the facilities they pay for.
“The Rec opened January 3, so technically it was open for a portion of the break, but after finals, the Rec was closed,” Cunningham said. “I particularly like going to the Rec, especially when nobody is there.”
While the Rec or 24-hour library access is not an essential part of life for students, the inaccessibility of these things during breaks is indicative of a broader problem for MU. The inconvenience and lack of variety when it comes to food leads students to make purchases they might not be able to afford and eat food that isn’t healthy.
Students don’t deserve to feel this way at an institution where they invest so much money, time and thought. If MU has problems staffing the on-campus dining spots without student workers, they should find other ways to staff them. MU must meet the needs of those who pay to live on its campus, no matter the time of year.
Edited by Preston Smith | psmith@themaneater.com
Copy edited by Claire Bauer and Natalie Kientzy | nkientzy@themaneater.com
Edited by Emily Skidmore | eskidmore@themaneater.com