Waiting to get food at the Hill Dining Center in Mosher-Jordan Hall can be a long process.

During prime dining hours — from 12-1 p.m. and 5-6 p.m. — the line to enter the dining center can extend up the stairs that lead to the dining hall. And once inside, students say finding a seat can be an even more demanding task.

For example, LSA sophomore Emily Bozek said she tries to avoid the cafeteria’s peak hours because the food lines can be a pretty big hassle.

“When I see a long line I usually just don’t go in it,” she said. “It really affects what I eat. When I see a line for the regular food that’s going out the door I just go and make myself a sandwich because I don’t have time.”

The cause of the bottleneck?

The obvious answer is the sheer number of students living near the dining center, which, after the University stopped serving meals in the Couzens and Alice Lloyd Residence Halls, is one of the only cafeterias left in that area.

Peter Logan, director of Housing Communications, said the dining center was built to accommodate about 640 people in the larger dining area and an additional 70 people can find seating in the dining area upstairs around the Victors plaza — so room for about 710 people.

But according to the University Housing website, about 3,090 students live in the Hill area.

Delays became a greater concern this year when the 400 or so residents who moved into the recently re-opened and revamped Stockwell Residence Hall this fall joined the crowd of approximately 2,700 students who reside in the Mary Markley , Mosher-Jordan, Couzens and Alice Lloyd Residence Halls.

Logan said that though no residence hall is technically assigned to a specific dining hall, due to its location, the Hill Dining Center generally serves students living in the Hill residence halls. He added that that was not the main point of the dining center, though.

“The Hill Dining Center was really built as more of a dining destination location as opposed to a specific dining hall designed only for certain students,” he said.

Though Logan said he recognizes that because of the dining center’s location and the lack of dining halls in most of the Hill residence halls — the dining hall in Couzens, for instance, was closed down when the Hill Dining Center opened — the Hill Dining Center would be the most logical choice for all students living in the Hill area.

Despite the additional 400 students from Stockwell living in the Hill area this year, Kathy Whiteside, Menu Systems & Nutrition Information manager, said there aren’t too many more students going to the Hill Dining Center than there were last year.

“It might appear to be more crowded,” she said. “But I think part of it is just students settling in and adjusting to their schedules and figuring out where they want to eat.”

Logan echoed this sentiment, saying he anticipates that once students settle in, the dining center will probably be less crowded.

“It has been busy,” he said. “We were anticipating all along that we would need to provide seating for students who used to eat in the variety of four different dining halls. We figure that the rush is due to new students probably not yet settled into their meal routines and their daily campus schedules.”

He added that the Hill Dining Center is fully equipped to accommodate the Stockwell residents.

Logan said students from Markley and Oxford Hall also tend to use the Hill Dining Center.

Whiteside said there is a master menu that each dining hall uses to create their respective menus, but some cafeterias have different equipment, which may limit the type of food they can serve.

“The Hill Dining Center was designed with a lot more options to offer a wide variety of food to the students,” she said.