<p>My son and I visited U of R and Syracuse on different days this week and I was surprised at some of the differences. My son and I have visited U of R 2 other times and wanted to get a better feel for it including the eating facilities. Now I am not that fussy but I have to say I was not impressed by the facilities. We went to 3 different eating areas and found all of them to be somewhat dirty, messy and the employees indifferent. Here are a few examples: At one place at the checkout there were no forks to eat with and so we asked where do we get some and were told by the checkout person to get some in the dining hall so we went there and they were empty too so we asked again and were told they were out(no help here)…Hmmm. When my son asked for more cheese on a burrito he was told they don’t do that and would not assist him even if he paid extra. I overheard a student ask an employee at the deli line for some corn and she said “we’re out” so the student asked for the beans and was told “there’s no more of that either” after this worker yelled to another co-worker in an adjacent cooking area 20 feet away to “Save me one of those double cheeseburgers will ya?!!”. Now this was not late in the day it was 12:20 and it was Accepted Student Day! We found the dining halls to be very unkept. Employees would just wipe off a table and throw the lettuce and tomatoes left on the table on the floor. My son and I were not impressed and left the area.
We also notice parts of the campus to be in disrepair. Now I understand that there is always a need for annual cleaning and sprucing up and after visiting a campus a few times you get to notice the littles things. Steps to many of the bldgs. were broken needing repair (not a new problem ) and floors in many of the bldgs. were very dirty. Where are the maint. workers? Nothing was being done to repair the snow damage and lack of grass scraped away from the plows along sidewalks etc.
My son stopped into Admissions to say hello to his district representative there and told her that we were here to check out some of the food areas. Her response was…Oooh, really? Where did you go? (with an uncomfortable, pained look in her eyes)
It gave my son and I an uncomfortable feeling.
Next day we went to Syracuse…
We had a different feeling here.
The food was good and employees were helpful and there were forks everywhere!! The campus was abuzz with workers everywhere repairing winter damage and putting in new lawns. We walked away feeling Syracuse is trying much harder then U of R to keep a nice looking campus.
I understand that everyone has their own opinion so please bear in mind this is just our take on these 2 schools.</p>
<p>Glad to hear the eating facilities have improved at Syracuse since I was a student there back in the 70’s. Your description of U of R pretty much summed up how things were back at SU then! :)</p>
<p>I spent the last two years of undergrad at Syracuse. I was in the honors program majoring in philosophy - selected Syracuse because a really cool professor who I had encountered at a guest lecture was in the process of leaving MIT to accept an endowed chair there. I wanted to work with him, so Syracuse it was. Had a wonderful time, great campus, tons of things to do, fabulous course offerings in my major and minor. My professors there were much better than those at either of the two graduate schools I attended.</p>
<p>This was many years ago, and I’m not aware of what changes have taken place over the years, but my experience was very positive.</p>