Clifton Bangaree  and Ashrinder Ranu are two roommates who, like many students, had high hopes to move to one of several highly desired residence halls. Unfortunately, due to circumstances beyond their control, this was one dream that would not be fulfilled. Instead they found themselves in Benedict College in H-Quad, a region well off the beaten path.

“We had no choice, pretty much,” Ranu said.

“We tried to rationalize it,” added Bangaree. “We were like, well at least we’ll have Benedict Dining.”

Ranu and Bangaree had come from Roth and Kelly respectively, quads with their own conveniently placed dining halls. Yet still, both quads at least required residents to leave their buildings and take a short walk before grabbing a bite.

For Benedict residents, food was never more than a staircase or two away; an improvement in convenience for anyone new to the building. One could say it even made up for the quad being so far away from the rest of the campus.

But that is no longer the case.

The day the two moved into their dorm, they learned the dining facility, which would have been located not even a hallway away from them, had been closed indefinitely.

“With Benedict, I feel like it’s the farthest away from anything now,” Ranu said.

And he wasn’t the only one disappointed in learning Benedict no longer sported a dining facility.

“Freshmen go up to the door, try to open the door, and then I have to tell them ‘Hey Benedict dining is no more’… they get pretty disappointed about it,” said Peter Milian, a residential assistant in Benedict.

Milian admitted that he, too, was disappointed in learning the building had lost one of its few redeeming qualities.

With H-Quad and particularly Benedict losing its luster to residents, it’s natural to wonder why exactly the dining hall was closed in the first place.

According to their official site, the Faculty Student’s Association, or FSA, closed the Bendict dining facility, also known as “H Café”, to help fund the eventual construction of a “student residence hall and dining center immediately east of the Stony Brook Union,” a construction job that is estimated to cost $34 million.

The site goes on to explain this new dining center, closest to Mendelsohn Quad, will serve the same purposes the Student Union now does.

This will also prepare for an eventual full renovation of the Stony Brook Union.

“They want to re-do the union. You can’t do that until the new [Mendelsohn] building’s open because you need to have something there where kids can eat.. that was their reasoning,” said Frank Fanizza, former president of the Residence Hall Association.

In several press releases, the FSA has stated they plan to complete construction of the new Mendelsohn Dining Hall before 2014. Such a decision leaves them with very little time to scratch together enough funding to get things started. The “underutilized H Café dining service ” was closed as soon as possible.

Also, to make sure the “necessary” closing of Benedict dining goes as smoothly as possible, FSA already completed an expansion to the Student Activities Center dining facility and extended the hours of the Student Union dining to 3 a.m. seven days a week, according to Angela Agnello, the director of Marketing & Communications for FSA.

Fanizza said FSA had contacted his organization before the official closing of Benedict Dining to talk about the decision.

“When FSA contacted us, they really just wanted… a residential perspective on the idea of closing ‘Bene’ in regards to the new Mendelsohn building that is going to go into construction soon,” Fanizza said.

He went on to say that although many were upset with FSA’s proposal, it wasn’t everyone, and there was little RHA could do.

“They had every intention with going ahead with their idea, but it was good enough at least that they wanted to come to us… to have the courtesy of at least telling you,” Fanizza said.

Fanizza said most people who protested the closing of the facility did so because it is as if residents are paying for something they would never get to use.  It was speculated the new dining hall will not be completed within the next couple years because construction on the new facility has yet to begin.

“It doesn’t sound fair,” said Benedict resident Adam Wagner, who, being a freshman, is actually most likely to enjoy the new facility’s completion out of all of Stony Brook’s undergrads.

But Fanizza says that in his opinion, no student is actually losing out here.

“It is bizarre to think that [all of this] is going towards something that we will never use… but you have to also remember that people who live here now are benefiting from things that alumni before them paid for… so it’s kind of like just giving back,” he said.

Within the last four years alone, Kelly Dining, the Wang Center, the Union Commons, and Roth Dining have all enjoyed renovations, not to mention the addition of a Starbucks to the Medical Center and the construction of two brand new dorm buildings.

Still, students can always find reason for complaint. Clifton Bangaree said the brunch at H Café will be missed.

“Those waffles were the best,” he said, shaking his head.