Perhaps my diction may be too pretentious, but I chose it hoping to add a humorous element to my piece. I wish to bear witness to a modern American tragedy: late meal.
The so-called “Frist Campus Center” provides an innocent lure to emaciated scholars, only deprive them of their health, wealth, and wellbeing. The so-called “Unlimited Meal Plan” is a falsity of the highest order. Allow me, if I may, to simply recall a series of incidents that have culminated in utter frustration. Upon arriving at this esteemed institution, and having nested in my domicile with great enthusiasm, I found myself one day a great distance from any location by which I may employ my “Unlimited Meal Plan.” To my delight, I located the “Frist Campus Center,” to which I was aware that meals may be derived if so necessary.
I proceeded merrily to the fine dining options afforded by a supposedly fine court, and selected my choice morsels. Evidently, in spite of all indications to the contrary, there was a limit to the amount of food I could acquire. To be sure, the quantity of food I had desired to partake was more than just modest compared to the volumes I consumed regularly at other meals. Nonetheless, I’d no authority to question the cashier, and there being a line behind me, and a generally social humiliation in returning items you cannot afford, I retrieved my wallet, paid the difference, and with some petulance, ate my loss.
Rather than providing me with “Unlimited Food,” my PUID has become a device by which additional charges may be billed against me. The reasoning, so it seemed, was because one could only take one’s meals at Frist Campus Center if the hour of one’s dining was not coinciding with the hours at which one normally may dine- thus I became familiar with the concept that “Late Meal” was not merely a convenience one would seek if one failed to acquire a meal properly in one’s domicile, but that one must strictly and literally eat at a time directly inconvenient by its very nature if one were to desire to eat at the location of Frist Campus Center. Defeated, I ate my loss.
The logic the Frist Campus Center presents is quite resounding and clear. Most clearly, people do not need to eat on weekends, and to desire to do so is a luxury to be afforded. This must be so, else wise those few who fail to attend a meal on the weekend would have some alternative by which to eat. Also, people can teleport, they simply choose not to. But if necessary they can relocate themselves anywhere on campus, so convenience of location is not an issue, and that there is some substantial reason that we are not to be made privy to, which explains why one is not permitted to take regular meals at this location though if one were to wait for the Earth to chronologically progress a few kilometers through space, then the dynamic changes and one may draw upon one’s initial investment to gain sustenance.
Now some may argue- but the forces of supply and demand would be overwhelming! and what could one expect from such an institution that has already provided so much? But satiety by aside generosity does little to mitigate grievances on a separate issue, nor should it be precluded as sufficient justification unless the motives and intent of such generosity were exposed before terms were concluded. And let not the reader be mistaken; it is not as if though Frist Campus Center has any obligation to provide for me sustenance. But logic begs to know that if they are willing to do so at one time why not at any time? I have paid no less than the mighty sum of $5000 in order to partake in the foods of this establishment- and whilst my notions of cost may be influenced by my local geography (the central regions of the United States, where products are demonstrably less in cost)- I remain confident that this sum I have paid is in fact NOT what is necessary in order for me to sustain myself for three quarters of a year- if that. And that how little is it to ask, then, that I may dine when and where it is most necessary for my objectives?
Cry out, fellow Princetonians! The tyranny of food courts is an affront to Man! If these burdensome polities cannot be reconstituted in some correct and rational manner subservient to usefulness- then may we at least demand some clear exposure and material to clarify this debauchery- rather than to allow those of novel orientation to fall victim, as I have, to ignorance, and let that be made a profit for those who would prey upon it? For shame, for shame.
Your unhumble unservant,
JBBA