Students are calling on Georgetown University to reinstate late night hours at the popular campus restaurant Epicurean and Company (Epi) on the weekends.

The Georgetown University Student Association (GUSA) Senate passed a resolution Nov. 7 calling for Epi’s hours to be extended until 3 a.m. on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights in order to provide more food options on campus. Prior to the shutdown of the university’s campus in the spring of 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Epi operated 24-hours Thursday through Sunday and was a popular location for students to dine late on weekends. Currently, Epi closes at 10 p.m. daily.

Epi’s former hours provided students a consistent and easy option for late-night meals, according to GUSA Senate Speaker Leo Rassieur (COL ’22).

“As those who were on-campus in previous years can attest, Epi was an important, reliable dining spot on campus well into the late night, and it has been disappointing not to benefit from that since our return to campus this semester,” Rassieur wrote in an email to The Hoya. “With the new, strict meal plan requirement, we need more ways to use Flex dollars to have an actual meal on a schedule that works for all students.”

As part of the resolution, the organization agreed to sign on to a student-launched petition created Nov. 2 calling on Aramark, the university food service provider that manages Epi, to reimplement the restaurant’s late-night hours. All Georgetown dining locations, including Epi, are serviced by Aramark. As of Nov. 11, more than 150 students had signed the petition.

Epi provides accessible late-night food options, and it is a campus tradition to eat there after a night out, according to the petition.

“The time is now! Epi’s hours are not what they used to be. Everyone loved grabbing a quesadilla at 2:30am after coming home from a night out in AdMo. What happens if you need a late night snack in Lau and everything else is closed,” the petition reads. “That’s why it is time to work with Epi’s management to restore its hours to 3am on Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays.”

Epi’s former late-night hours provided students with a space on campus to socialize with friends, according to Josue Oros (MSB ’22), who launched the petition.

“It was like a different way of socializing,” Oros said. “You would see most of the people in your grade, or you would see a lot of familiar faces, so it was very nice because sometimes when everybody has different schedules, you haven’t seen people in a while. It was a very nice time. I think that’s where I made a lot of new friendships.”

Epi was also a cost-friendly option for students to gather after nights out, according to Daniel Arenas (MSB ’22), who signed the petition. 

“Everyone has their own things to do every weekend; we’re all in different clubs and we all go to different parties,” Arenas said in a Zoom interview with The Hoya. “For that reason, this was sort of like a place where everyone could come together after every different event and see each other. It was always a good place to catch up with people. It was also just a great post-game because if you don’t have too much money to go out to eat or order UberEats, that was always there and you could use your flex.” 

Since Epi no longer operates past 10 p.m. on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights, students now typically frequent the Wawa located on Wisconsin Ave. for late night food options, according to Oros, who says Wawa’s distance from campus presents a safety risk for students, especially if students were drinking.

“Wawa is obviously a little bit far away,” Oros said. “I saw Epi as a better choice than Wawa. I’d rather have somebody pass out in Epi or outside of Epi, closer to everybody’s dorm, than out by Wisconsin, which is very far away.”

The university set Epi’s hours to best accommodate the campus community, according to a university spokesperson. 

“We appreciate student support of Epicurean and welcome community feedback about on-campus dining,” the spokesperson wrote in an email to The Hoya. “Epicurean’s hours are selected to best meet the needs of the campus community based on utilization rates.”