Now this has been a hard year, there’s no doubt about it. It’s been tough on all of us. Worse, the selective media blackouts make it hard to stay on top of the issues that really matter. With the stock market crash, global pandemic, and proto-apocalyptic environmental catastrophes, it can be hard to remember the greatest tragedy of 2020 thus far: the closing of the Saybrook dining hall.
Forget about all that jibber jabber nonsense about an election. Think about us, the poor members of the Saybrook community. We have to go through the next phase of our academic careers without a premium dining facility where we can bond with equally distinguished Saybrugians. How are we to foster a sense of collegiate community without sitting at different tables and silently munching on Frosted Flakes as a post-exam treat?
If I had known I would be facing this discriminatory treatment at the hands of Yale University, I would simply have requested to be in Jonathan Edwards like my father and grandfather, Archibald D. Van Buren III and II, respectively. I am confident that their distinguished alumni would never permit such an outrageous undertaking during my time at school. This is what I get for trying to be a man of the people!
Meeting strangers in the dining hall was my primary form of social interaction after Canvas DMing my philosophy TF and lingering after YPU debates to hit on the hot libertarian from Murray. Where besides the hallowed halls of the Saybrook can I smile without teeth at the people from my Froco group? Where can I make a half-witty comment in line to a Freshman that asserts my intellectual superiority and approachable, down-to-earth nature? Certainly not in the filthy, allergen-filled courtyard! Without the dining hall, I spend my days staring slack-jawed at the floor of my single, hoping to catch a glimpse of the mouse that lives behind my dresser. Without Saybrook, I am nowhere. Without Saybrook, I am nothing.
I refuse to be silenced and marginalized by Big Dining. I demand that Yale address this inequity promptly and appropriately lest my so-called “Bright College Years” fizzle away before my very eyes. This is injustice in our time and I will not rest until this malfeasance has been undone. It is my right as a student, nay as a human being, to have my own dining hall and choose, with my own superior reasoning and impeccable taste, to eat at Berkeley anyway.
—C. Rose
