Staff EDITORIAL: Revisit sit-down dining

In an unfortunate but necessary action, officials recently announced the closure of the Oak Room, which has lost money for many years. In spite of the restaurant's departure, there remains a need for a fine dining facility on campus. In the coming months, officials must reassess the campus dining culture and provide a new restaurant for faculty, students and staff who desire upscale dining without having to travel off campus.

Foremost, officials must recognize that the demise of the Oak Room was the result of a combination of mediocre food, poor accessibility and a bland atmosphere, and not of a lack of demand for fine dining. Admittedly, the pace of life at Duke has endowed more and more people with the "grab and go" mentality associated with Subway or the Great Hall. However, situations like faculty dinners, student-faculty meals or gatherings of large numbers of students or staff will always necessitate the presence of a sit-down dinner spot on campus. Many people would often opt to eat on campus rather than driving to off-campus restaurants or paying steep prices at the Washington Duke Inn.

In order for a new eatery to be successful, it must create the feel of an off-campus restaurant, while catering to the specific quirks of Duke students. Most importantly, it must offer payment on points, and be situated so as to be more accessible than the Oak Room, with indoor and open-air seating. At the same time, there should be an effort to lend the restaurant some semblance of a firm identity, whether that be by assigning a particular theme to the menu, like Italian or Mediterranean, or by decorating to unify the menu and the atmosphere. Preferably, the new eatery should be built in a prominent location, along the BC walkway. Regardless, a moderately-priced fine dining facility should be a component of the proposed Student Village.

The Oak Room's departure will also benefit two growing campus organizations. The Mary Lou Williams Center for Black Culture will move from the basement of the West Union Building into the space vacated by the Oak Room, while the Center for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Life will move from the second floor of the Flowers Builing into the West Union basement. Leaders at the Mary Lou Williams Center have acknowledged the symbolic importance of moving from a relatively obscure loation to such a prominent spot on campus. The LGBT center is happy with their new basement loaction, as it will allow people to enter and leave discreetly. Members of both groups say the moves will give their respective staffs more meeting, work and programming space.

The loss of the Oak Room brings an end to one of Duke dining's longstanding traditions, and creates a void in dining services that may remain unfilled for a long period of time. However, the benefits of a potentially revamped fine dining facility, combined with the added space provided to the Mary Lou Williams and LGBT Centers, make the Oak Room's closure a positive building block for the future.