I feel trite and unoriginal writing an article about dining halls. These buildings are inspiration for thousands of polemic columns berating them for volatile nutrients, urine-like odor and, in an unfair attack, their propensity to harbor most every disease listed in the dictionary. I, however, will argue for why I like them, why they deserve laurels and praises and why harboring every known disease is actually a good thing.
First of all, students save much time from not having to cook their own meals. When I cook at my house, I end up spending roughly two hours on each meal, although I will admit one hour and 55 minutes of that is dedicated to explaining to the firemen how the incident was not my fault this time. With this extra free time, students are able to study more, achieve their life goals and lead the world to global peace. This may be an overly optimistic statement, but I've always been an Ursula Upper. In fact, in high school all my friends called me "Ursula," for both that reason and my tendency to grow very fat.
Secondly, dining halls are social havens. There are so many students in them, and most any table will welcome in a stray eater. I befriended so many people my first year just because I had the nerve to sit down at a random table and strike up a conversation. It was so easy to make friends back then. I only had to utter the very, very humorous comment that no matter what one ate, the dining hall food tasted like bland mashed potatoes. They all loved it. "Chris," they were so fond of saying, "perhaps that's because you only eat the bland mashed potatoes." Needless to say, these people are no longer my friends.
You can also steal the dining hall trays and use them in a variety of ways. The list includes, but is by no means limited to, using the tray as:
1: A snow sled
2: A surfboard
3. A large and unbendable corset
Our school also has those table tents, the triangular stands that promote various school activities and sit atop the dining hall tables. Since I rarely look at flyers (on principle), these are my sole means of discovering what events are going on. The only problem with the table tents is that whoever writes them is clearly blind. Every event listing either has a spelling mistake or is written in another language. Once, for my friend's lacrosse championship game info, the typist incorrectly typed in the event's name, time, date, location and description. Later my friend realized he had been looking at an ad for a belly dancing performance, but this didn't stop him from becoming really angry, stealing a tray and having thereafter a free corset.
Moreover, our dining halls have a buffet setup. Since one can grab as much food as one wants, students certainly receive their money's worth. Want a pizza slice? Take four. Want some Jell-O? Take three bowls worth. Want the soda machine? Hide it under your shirt and quietly leave. I love the fact I can eat so much in one visit, and this is certainly much better than going to an expensive, fashionable French restaurant, the kind where the waiters can tell you exactly what wine bottle and what year would go perfectly with your trip to the restroom. I swear, the few times I've been to such restaurants I've paid $20 for what appeared to be three shoots of parsley. Most places actually hand out parsley for free, saying, "This is disgusting, you take it."
Finally, there are benefits inherent in dining halls housing a plethora of diseases. The disease list includes, but is by no means limited to, carcinogenic substances, the Ebola virus, feline HIV and the terrible germ that causes one to enjoy "Deal or No Deal." Why, you may ask, is this fact a positive thing? Well, look at it like this. It's a known truth that what doesn't kill you probably kills your taste buds. So if you can survive the illnesses concealed in dining hall food, then from thereon none of it tastes bad, and with every bite of charred and dry chicken, you can imagine you're eating gourmet cuisine. This won't prevent you from having many, many trips to the little girl's room, but at least your palate will be satisfied. Plus, if you hire a French waiter, you'll always have the perfect wine for every bathroom visit. The combination of alcohol and defunct taste buds might actually cause you to love dining hall food, which would surely increase your friend list, since so many people are attracted to freaks of nature.
Chris's column runs weekly Mondays. He can be reached at shuptrine@cavalierdaily.com.
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