Residential college dining halls will be open until at least 7:30 p.m. and Commons will no longer serve dinner next year in a series of changes to meal hours that will be implemented by Yale Dining.

Following discussions with students, Yale College Council members, administrators and unions, Executive Director Rafi Taherian announced Monday that they would extend dinner hours in the colleges on Monday through Thursday nights.

Taherian initially said that Yale Dining would consider the extension after 77 percent of students expressed support for extended dinner hours in a Yale Daily News poll in March.

“We knew that this was a major issue for students, and we knew we wanted to do something about it,” he said. “It was the perfect scenario, this was the right time to do it.”

Next year, all twelve colleges will serve dinner until 7:30 p.m. Monday through Thursday. Morse, Ezra Stiles, and Calhoun colleges will stay open until 8 p.m. those days. Dining hall hours will remain the same on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday so that colleges will still be able to host evening events like dances in their dining halls.

In another major change, Commons will no longer serve dinner on weekdays, closing at 3 p.m. Transfers will be accepted until 5 p.m. at Durfee’s, Uncommons, and other retail locations. Commons was never open on weekends.

The facility used to only serve breakfast and lunch before residential college renovations began 12 years ago.

Jeanette Norton, Deputy Director of Finance & Administration, said closing Commons for dinner will — in returning Commons to its previous schedule — help balance out labor costs, and encourage freshmen to eat dinner in their residential colleges.

With the renovations of the 12 residential colleges finished, and additional dining staff needed for the 12th dining hall, Taherian said many of the Commons workers will have new shifts to accommodate the opening of Ezra Stiles and the longer college dinner hours so that Yale Dining does not have to make any significant layoffs or hires

Philips told the News in April that students have voiced their desires for later dinner hours in the past, and after the issue came up again this year Dining decided to include a detailed questionnaire about hours in their spring survey.

After getting such strong support for extending hours, Taherian said he met with members of the YCC to discuss the plan, who helped him discuss various options for extending dinner hours. He added that many YCC members had included extending dinner hours in their election platforms, which showed that this was an issue students cared about.

All of Yale’s Dining Halls will end their service for the year after dinner on Tuesday.