Dana Vs. Bucknell Dining Hall

Firstly, I’d like to say thank you to all the people who work hard in Dana every day to provide us with meals and create a welcoming dining experience.

This past weekend, the Track and Field team travelled to Bucknell University to compete at the Bucknell Bison classic. While on campus, a group from the team was able to go to the main Bucknell dining hall, Bostwick Marketplace (Bucknell Dana).

This is a review of Bostwick Marketplace and a comparison to Dana Dining Hall here at St. Lawrence.

The first impression of Bucknell Dana, upon walking in, was very different from Dana Dining Hall. Bucknell Dana had a sleek and modern design with a color palette focused around grey and other cool colors. Describing the environment of Bucknell Dana, Zach Jaworski ’25 said, “It feels like a scene out of 1984, where at home values have been replaced by mechanized, over corporatization of one’s traditional spaces.”

All of the tables were made of light gray, hard plastic with dark blue plastic chairs around them. The serving areas had hard white countertops with stainless steel fixtures, serving containers, and utensils. Lastly, Bucknell Dana was messier, with spilled food on many tables and napkins and scraps of food left all over the ground. This can be attributed to students not cleaning up after themselves after their meal.

This choice of design is very contrasting to Dana Dining Hall, which has a very wood-focused design. While many of you go to Dana Dining Hall every day, allow a short description of its features: the tables and chairs are made of wood, along with the buffet stands. The walls are painted in a tan color with darker brown railings and trim. This creates an entirely different feeling within Dana Dining Hall.

Spencer May ’26 said, “After a rough or stressful day, I go to Dana to decompress.” This type of environment is what makes Dana a hub of student life here on campus, where students go to enjoy a good meal, hang out, and relax. Further, Dana is often very clean, with open tables always free of food scraps and other waste.

While students generally pick after themselves, it is clear that the hard work of the Dana staff keeps the dining hall clean and welcoming for students to enjoy their meals.

Both dining halls have different layouts of their buffet and dish return areas. As many of you know, Dana has its main buffet line with the main entrée and other regular items, along with the sandwich and salad bars. At Bucknell Dana, instead of one main buffet bar, they have around five different stations. This seemed effective in reducing lines—allowing students to go and get the food that they wanted without having to wait. Another difference in their setup was the location of the dish return line. Here at Dana, it is conveniently located by the exit so you can drop your dishes off as you leave. At Bucknell Dana, it is near one of the exits but is not directly on the way out of the dining hall.

Most importantly, the food options available at both dining halls differ, with Bucknell Dana generally having more options— largely a result of it serving a larger student body. They have a vegan bar where you can get custom made bowls, and a stir fry bar where they rotate between made-to-order noodle bowls, stir fries, mac and cheese bowls, and other options.

Along with these, they had a slightly larger number of options, but featured a lot of similar staples to Dana, like pasta with different sauces, burgers, grilled chicken, and a salad and deli bar. Unlike Dana, Bucknell Dana often had stations where the dining staff served the food to you instead of it being self-serve. While not better or worse than entirely self-serve, it changes the dining experience for students.

To conclude this comparison, I want to feature a quick head-to-head comparison of two staple food items: grilled chicken and coffee. Here at Dana, the grilled chicken is often known to be dry and bland, often made better by eating it with other food. At Bucknell Dana, the grilled chicken was perfectly cooked, had more flavor, and could be eaten on its own.

The coffee on the other hand was a clear win for Dana. While I did not have any myself, Matt Taylor ’25 provided his insight as an experienced Dana coffee drinker. He said, “Bucknell coffee wasn’t hot enough compared to Dana coffee. It was decent.” It was Typical dining hall coffee but didn’t have as good of a taste as Dana coffee.

While both dining halls supply the essential service of keeping their respective student populations fed, they have different options and environments. With a larger student population, Bucknell Dana can offer more options each day but cannot stand up to the environment Dana has for everyone who dines there.