William and Mary has a contract with Marriott food services to provide meals at the three eating facilities on campus. These are the Caf, the UC, and the Marketplace. The Caf is located on one end of the campus, next to most of the freshman dorms. Thus, you can usually find mostly freshmen and fraternity members there, as well as a smattering of upperclassmen from the Randolph complex which is right across the street. The UC, located in the University Center (as if you hadn't guessed), is right about in the middle of campus, so the distribution there is pretty even across the board. Finally, the Marketplace is on the far side of campus from the Caf, so it is usually frequented for lunch by those who have classes on old campus and the people living in the dorms that are over there (Hunt, Taliaferro, Jefferson, Barrett, Chandler, Landrum).
At these eating establishments, the type of food served is as varied as the students there. The Caf is an all you can eat deal, with usually one or two entrees, and a couple of general lines, such as hamburgers, pizza, sometimes spaghetti, and of course, if all else fails, there is always the cereal...unless they run out. (Now, I have not frequented the caf since my freshman year, so this may not still be true, but I suspect it is.) The big problem is when they run out of food. If you want to be sure they have everything you want, go at 4:30 to dinner... otherwise, you are on your own. This actually holds true for all of the eating establishments. I have never been to a restaurant that routinely ran out of hamburger buns but...well, you get the picture.
On to the UC. This is the newest of the eating establishments, and it works on a charge per item deal. A hamburger is $8.95, a soda is $10, etc...(Just kidding, but not by much.) Each meal on the meal plan is worth like $4.50 for lunch, and almost $5 for dinner. So if you go over, you get into credits...I don't really want to go into it. If you are curious, ask any W&M student. The UC serves one main entree, and they always have a hamburger line, as well as sandwich meat, and a fairly nice salad bar. They also have a nice desert selection, but that gets expensive real fast. The worst thing about the UC is the crowd. The Marketplace is closed on weekends (it was open for a while a couple of years ago, but I guess that got too expensive...typical) and so the UC always has massive crowds on Saturday and Sunday. If you go into the UC on a Sunday evening around 6, don't expect to be eating for a while. I've seen lines go all the way out the door and beyond (at that point, somebody would usually yell, "Taco Bell!" and we would all run for the exit instead of standing in line like lemmings.)
The last of the eating places, the Marketplace, was the one I frequented the most in my tenure at the College. It was convenient to my residence, and I liked the food. The Marketplace is set up almost like a food court in a mall, except smaller. It also operates on the charge per item deal, but the food is quite different from the UC. They have the same things every day. There is a Rally's Hamburgers, a gyro line, a pseudo subway, a pseudo little ceasars, a salad line, and a healthy choice line. They even have a TCBY, but its like three bucks for a small yougurt. That would have to be your whole meal.
The one thing to remember about any of the eating places is, don't get there late. When they say the Marketplace closes at 7, they mean 5 to 7. If you are there one minute late, well, lets just say their motto is "no mercy for the slow!" One other thing to remember is watch out for the mold growing on the pudding...no kidding, that actually happened to a friend of mine once.
Enough about food. Lets talk about one of my favorite things on campus, parking spaces. First, a little background. Freshmen are not allowed to have cars. Neither are sophomores, unless they live off campus or at Dillard. (Ask someone about Dillard...its an experience. I'll just say...imagine living next to a mental institution about two miles from campus. To say the least, it's not the most desired location to live.) Okay, back to parking. About half to two thirds of all the resident student parking spots on campus are around the freshman dorms. Specifically, in Yates lot. Yates being, you guessed it, a freshman dorm. The rest are down Landrum drive, which is a one way street that runs past, you guessed it, Landrum dorm. And also Chandler. These two are actually upperclassmen dorms. I actually lived in Chandler my senior year. Now the problem here is that there are at least 100 or so less spots than Juniors and Seniors with cars. Of course, this does not count all the freshmen and sophomores that somehow get stickers, or just park around Ludwell, which is the one place you can park close to campus that doesn't get checked. So, the idea becomes to get a spot close to your dorm, and leave the car there forever. There are more arguments about who will drive somewhere than anything else...no one wants to give up their parking spot.
Of course, there is an art to it. There are certain times during the week when there will be spots available. A good time to try and park is on a Saturday or early on Sunday, when a lot of people are gone. But wait till Sunday night, and you will never get a spot. Of course, if you move your car during the week, that is sure to be a lost parking spot. And I heard that they were going to take away more spots this year! One thing never to try is parking in a faculty/staff spot. These are sacrosanct, and the horde of parking services people will always catch you and give you a ticket...or if they are in a bad mood, they will wheel lock your car (mostly right before you have to be somewhere!) I have a suspicion that parking services is how the school payed for the new cable and ethernet connections into the dorms. I know I contributed over my fair share.
Now, apart from parking, driving around campus can be an experience as well. There is one well known spot that no one should miss when they drive into Williamsburg. That is Confusion Corner. This corner is aptly named, as it is the intersection of four streets... it is impossible to describe, you just have to see it. This is at the very end (or the beginning) of campus. Duke of Gloucester (DOG) streen runs away from the campus here. Perpendicular to that runs South Henry Street and to top it off, Jamestown Road and Richmond Road, the streets that bracket the campus, meet in a v here as well. You really should look at it on a map... it's really incredible. So when the tourons come down in the spring and fall, they take one look at this intersection as the approach it in their mini vans, and they run screaming (actually, some go into catatonic shock instead, but the effect is the same). This is not good for traffic. Cars have been known to sit at Confusion Corner for weeks (ok, I'm exaggerating a bit here) without moving.