Campus Amenities

Student Dining
Like most universities, Greyson includes a meal plan with the standard student room & board package, offering twenty meals per week in one of several dining locations. The main student dining hall, located in the Lance Memorial Student Union, offers breakfast between 8:30 and 10:30 am, lunch between 12:30 and 2:30 pm, and dinner between 6:30 and 8:30 pm every week, Monday through Saturday, while school is in session. Additionally, it offers Sunday brunch from 11:00 am to 1:00 pm and Sunday dinner from 5:30 to 8:00 pm. The other student dining halls -- located in Pierce Hall, Worth Hall, Lance Hall and Harcourt Hall -- operate on a reduced schedule, offering Monday through Saturday breakfast from 9:00 to 10:00 am, lunch from 1:00 to 2:00 pm, and dinner from 6:30 to 7:30 pm; on Sundays, they remain closed for brunch, and open for dinner between 6:00 and 7:00 pm. Though the hours theoretically refer only to the serving areas, and students are allowed to remain in the dining areas as long as they like, most of the dining services staff frowns on loitering and has occasionally been known to go so far as to lock students in if they remain more than an hour after closing.

Greyson also offers a number of dining options outside of the main meal plan, including the Rathskeller snack bar and Common Grounds coffee shop in the Student Union, Gray's Juice Bar in the North Sports Center, and even the Apocryphon Café on the nearby Xavier Campus. All of these locations accept "Gryphon Bucks," credits that all students can buy throughout the school year at 75 cents on the dollar and place on their student I.D. cards, in exchange for food and beverages; additionally, students can agree to take a reduced meal plan in exchange for a certain amount of Gryphon Bucks each semester, should they want to expand their immediate dining options further -- a popular option, as the food in the dining halls is mass-produced and often of mediocre quality and questionable freshness.

Internet and Phone Service
Due to popular demand and thanks in large part to generous donations from alumni, Greyson offers a high-quality local network, giving each student a 100 Mbps Ethernet connection in their dorm room, a network drive with ample storage space and access to a number of licensed commercial software programs, 50 megabytes of webspace, and wireless access in all academic buildings and dorms, as well as the Student Union. Additionally, there are a number of computer labs on campus, all offering Internet access, a wide array of software, CD/DVD burners, scanners and printers.

Phone service on campus is somewhat more limited. Each student has a phone jack in their room, but only local phone service is offered. Any student wishing to make a long distance call must obtain a calling card with a toll-free number. There has been some discussion within the administration of adding long distance service for which each dorm room would be charged each semester, but most agree that the calling card program is in many ways fairer, as each student is responsible only for the calls they personally make, as opposed to calls made by roommates and guests. Naturally, aside from the phones in student dorm rooms, there are any number of payphones scattered throughout Greyson's main campus.

Cable and Video Service
Working in conjunction with local cable providers, Greyson offers a limited entertainment package in each dorm room, including all the regional network affiliates as well as a small number of basic cable offerings, including Cartoon Network, the Disney Channel, Toon Disney, the Discovery Channel, MTV, VH1, Sci Fi, TNT and USA. Naturally, Greyson's student-run television channel, WGRU, is also included in this offering, providing students with a peer perspective on local news as well as various experimental films, low-budget dramas, and comedy sketch shows all produced by Greyson's students, staff and faculty. Students are not permitted to install satellite dishes or alternative cable systems in their dorm rooms, though some of the apartment buildings owned and operated by the school allow tenants to install their own systems; in fact, many of the apartments offered to graduate students don't offer the same free basic cable access students enjoy in the dorms.

Additionally, Greyson offers a wide selection of streaming video through the local student network; while most of the films distributed in this manner are those assigned as required viewing in various classes, the university has made agreements to offer a limited number of popular television shows, animated shorts and classic films, as well. Film students and art students specializing in animation are encouraged to add their projects to the media hub as well. Last but far from least, in the past couple of years, Greyson has been experimenting with video on demand in certain suites in Harcourt Hall. Since this technology involves the use of expensive cable boxes that might easily be damaged by careless students, it has yet to be implemented on a wider scale, despite growing student demand.

Health and Counseling Services
Like many other universities, Greyson offers basic health services to all its students -- flu shots, pregnancy tests, birth control, examinations conducted by registered nurses in the event of illness or injury, and so forth. The university also offers light box sessions in the winter, for the benefit of those suffering from seasonal affective disorder, and other more specialized items and services. Most of the services offered by the student health center are available at the small clinic in the Student Union, up to and including a pharmacy that can fill most student prescriptions. However, those injuries, illnesses and other problems that cannot be treated with a bandage, a pill or a common injection are generally referred to the Upton Medical Center on the North Campus, where the residents are better equipped to offer more extensive medical care to students in emergency situations. The university pays 30% of the hospital bill for those students referred to Upton by the nurses at the health center, but the students themselves (or, more often, their own HMOs) are responsible for the remainder.

Greyson also offers students access to various counselors, all based out of the North Campus, many of them graduate students in psychology. The university limits such counseling sessions to a maximum of eight per student per academic year, but these counselors are really only meant to be used in times of crisis, and the health center is always happy to refer students to local therapists if they require long-term care. In addition to the counselors available to students, the university offers a free crisis hotline operated by both graduate and undergraduate psychology students and open twenty-four hours per day while school is in session.