There has been a lot of activity here at Dartmouth the last couple of weeks, most notably of course being the Greek system's rush process. It would have been difficult not to have noticed this going on because there were signs of potential pledges everywhere you looked. For instance, on the second night of rush I walked into Thayer to get a sandwich and I must have seen at least 30 guys in their formal wear which surprised me because I didn't even know you could rush Food Court. But apparently you can. So let me go on the record right now and officially say that I hope Food Court has an excellent pledge class this year. Why am I so quick to hand the good members of Food Court my blessing? Because I hear that Food Court has a student-employee shortage this year. Not that I'm one to complain more than several times a day, but I believe this employee shortage might be responsible for a lot of recent dining-related difficulties. I think you can all agree that eating meals this term has been more problematic than ever:
To start with, as far as I can tell, the majority of the freshmen class seems to have been admitted to Dartmouth on scholarships that strictly stipulate that they eat dinner at exactly 6:30 p.m. every single day. This causes trouble for those of us just trying to "swing by Food Court" to grab some food -- because by the time we get there the hot dinner line extends back roughly to Bangor, Maine. And, might I add, Bangor is a lovely town, but not a great place to be when all you want to do is get some chicken parmesan before you graduate.
Adding to the frustration of this situation is that inevitably as soon as you get in line they will run out of whatever food is being served. Don't ask me what people are in charge of organizing these meals, but apparently they're perpetually working under the illusion that they're preparing dinner for a family of six. So of course you find yourself standing there getting angry that the line isn't moving, and then becoming even angrier when you notice that the 400 people in front of you don't seem to care. They just stand there nonchalantly, laughing, joking and in general not showing any concern that they haven't moved any closer to the food since the Clinton administration. Eventually you get so fed up with the whole situation that you decide to switch over to the seemingly shorter sandwich line. This would be a good idea if everyone in front of you planned on ordering a turkey sandwich like most decent human beings. But instead they will all order some sort of mutant wrap, each featuring a unique combination of roughly 17 billion ingredients.
So naturally you get so mad that you throw your tray through the window of that stupid baked goods display, and then the manager is all like ,"You have to pay for that," and you're all like, "Forget you man, why don't you pay for that which is my time," and then he's like, "That doesn't make any sense?" and then you get put on probation for a term and your brother calls you "Angry-Cal" when you come home for Thanksgiving, so you walk away from the table before the pie is served and ruin the holiday for everyone. But you don't care, because you know you're right!
Whew! I'm sorry, I guess I got a little excited there; just give me a second to cool down. Writing about these entirely hypothetical situations can get a little intense sometimes. But I should have known better than to let my emotions get out of control, for a wise man once said to me, "Shut up, Cal." A slightly wiser man then later added, "If you're going to get angry about something, instead of complaining try to offer solutions." So I think I will follow the sager advice and give a few practical tips that I think could really help improve the current Food Court dining experience:
1) Label the salad dressing bottles. Put labels on the actual bottles, not the glass above them. People tend to put the containers back in the wrong spot, so then when you try to innocently pour some "light Italian" on your salad you end up with some demented dressing that looks to be "fermented yak mucus" or maybe "ranch."
2) Add a new "kind-of-large" cup size. We need a new cup size -- the current gap between "medium" and "large" is too excessive. The "medium" cup isn't quite enough to get me through a South of the Border wrap, and the "large" cup seems to be about the right size to bathe a full-grown Shetland pony.
3) Make the grill guys nicer. Why is it that whenever I try to order something off the grill I get treated like I just finished killing several puppies in the parking lot, or some other equally horrible deed worthy of their intense irritation:
Me: I'll have the hamburger spe
Grill guy: [obviously annoyed] With fries!?
Me: Well, yes, the full spe
Grill guy: [visibly angered by my arro-gance] Here or to go!
Me: To go, and if you could ad
Grill guy: [loudly] Next! [under breath] Freakin' puppy killer
4) Build 30 Food Courts identical to Thayer so that you can always find a dining location with no lines: I think this is pretty self-explanatory.
I am fairly confident that these suggestions should go a long way toward solving Food Court-related problems. Now that I have gotten my issues with the Dartmouth Dining Services out of the way, I can return to the original subject of this column, which is of course discussing my experience with the rich tradition embodied by the annual Greek system rush process. An event that was once cherished but is now under great scrutiny, a famed rite of passage for the men of Dartmouth, a ritual that has woven itself into the very fabric of this institution's great history it was neat.
