Facts: There are no 24-hour dining services offered at N.C. State. According to University Dining, there has not been enough student support of the idea of a 24-hour service to pursue plans to get it going.

Opinion: If students want longer hours for coffee, ice cream or C-Store runs, then they need to let Dining know. Dining is willing to listen and provide those services, but they are waiting for students to tell them. It could eventually be possible to get two wide eyes at Hill of Beans at 2 or 3 a.m. if students spoke up.

You feel like you blinked and two hours have gone by. Your head feels like it weighs an extra four pounds, and you have read the same sentence from the same paragraph in your textbook at least four times. You pull out your cell phone to check the time and at first you do not even believe it when the soft luminescence tells you it’s 4 a.m. Perhaps you think to yourself, “If only I could walk somewhere on campus and get a cup of coffee.”

Why is there not a 24-hour C-store on campus? Has this possibility even been discussed in whatever dark back room these decisions are made? It turns out that it has to some degree, and those rooms are actually fairly pleasant and populated with equally pleasant people. They are just waiting for students tell them what they want.

The key to getting the services many of us would like on campus is often as simple as letting the right people know the demand exists. But, this takes students acting on their needs and actively seeking to make it known. If the students want later services, they need only let the staff supplying those services know and eventually they will be made available.

University Dining is always willing to listen to what students want and if enough students would utilize a 24-hour C-Store, they would love to make it happen. As of yet, there hasn’t been enough student interest for such a service to bring any plans into being. If the idea of such a place appeals to you, tell University Dining now. Double fisting coffee during a later-than-1-a.m. cram session is within reach.

What it comes down to is that the University reacts to the wants and demands of the student body. If enough students want a safe place to sit, study and drink coffee at 4 a.m. while they push to meet the online deadline for their 8 a.m. class, the University will take notice. If there is a demand for a C-store in that same location so that those same students can buy index cards and supplies so they might bathe the pages of their Chemistry textbook in florescent yellow, it can happen.

It is not the purview of the University to provide programs and services for which there is no demand. So, take the penny for your thoughts and put it in the Give a Penny/Take a Penny cup, and you will likely be surprised by the results.