Cornell Dining Network Efficiency
With the reinstatement of in person classes and the return of the full student body, the Cornell University dining network has been experiencing ineffectiveness. Dining hall and eatery lines have been snaking out the door, and seating areas have been packing in students shoulder to shoulder in order for everyone to have a place to eat. The foot traffic network has undergone drastic changes from last semester, when central campus was practically deserted and dining halls were primarily take-out, resulting in shorter lines and empty seating areas. The drastic contrast has been overwhelming to the dining hall workers and the students, with many concerned about the time constraint and the public safety risks with campus on a yellow covid alert. The major questions Cornell students are having are why are the wait times so much longer, and how will this overwhelmed dining hall network impact the network of covid cases on campus?
To address the first question, the wait time has increased significantly due to the influx of students and the dining halls being understaffed. Many students attended classes remotely or took a gap year last semester due to the conditions of the pandemic, leaving the number of students on campus to be significantly less than now. And, with many large classes occurring simultaneously on central campus, there are large influxes of students crowding the dining halls during the times directly following the release of students from class. The waiting times in line would be represented by the edges of a network, with each dining hall being its own network and each of its stations being a node in the network. All the lines have highly variable waiting times, and the large crowds of students all at once overwhelm the lines from a 5 minute wait to a 30 minute wait within a matter of minutes. A big factor in the variability of waiting times is the efficiency of the staff running the lines, and currently the dining halls are short staffed, making the waiting times longer. Also, the dining halls are not operating at a Nash equilibrium when it comes to waiting times. There are some stations that are more popular than others, for example the burrito bowl station at terrace, and the students’ desire for certain foods is causing the dining halls not to run at an optimal state. A Braess’s paradox can also be observed within the network of dining halls. Okenshields and Mac’s reopened this semester, providing students with more large places to eat, yet the meal time traffic is worse than before. The increased number of students does play a significant role in this, but also with a meal swipe dining hall open on central campus now, students are remaining on central campus all day, whereas last year many students returned to their dorms on north, west, or south campuses after they finished their classes due to their being no meal swipe option on central campus. By reintroducing a dining hall on central campus, the traffic of students has increased, rather than improving.
How will the overwhelmed dining hall network impact the network of covid cases? That is something that they are unsure of, but many are not optimistic. The administration tries to reassure students that if they are fully vaccinated, there is little risk in eating with your mask off in a public place. But many students have witness firsthand that a vaccinated individual can still get covid, and being in a crowded dining hall, forced into close proximity with other unmasked individuals who you don’t know where they have been, does not help the covid case numbers and the fear of the student body. I anticipate that some of the reported covid cases so far have been from these close proximities, and it is possible for an outbreak to spread through a dining hall. With a student body network as large as Cornell’s, and students interacting with many different groups of people due to interdisciplinary study and nonacademic interests, the network is very connected, allowing a virus to spread rapidly. We will have to wait and see if any major covid findings within the dining halls come to surface as the semester goes on.