Like most of you, I’ve noticed something different about the dining hall these last few weeks. Something lurking just in plain sight. Something sinister. Something…small.
Yes, dear reader, your suspicions about the dining hall’s portion sizes were not unfounded, your increased hunger pangs not psychosomatic. I too have observed that the dining hall has been cutting back on portion sizes for the last several weeks and the consequences wrought have been devastating.
Athletes, once the recipients of a veritable bounty, are forced to stoop to the unenviable level of a certain Charles Dickens orphan, quoting the only line anyone knows from “Oliver Twist.” The rest of us, like actors in an overactive bladder commercial, must make frequent trips from the table.
“So what?” You may say. “Just get back in line when you want more food.”
To which I would respond with an emphatic “Heck no! I’m an American!”
When you lose the remote, do you get up to change the channel, or do you keep watching Spanish-dubbed Antique Roadshow? That’s what I thought.
This is most definitely an outrage, but if the U.S. Treasury Department has taught us anything, it’s that there are two sides to every coin. The changes made by Bon Appetit have (miraculously) resulted in some good. I myself have lost five pounds in two months thanks to the good folks at Bon Appetit, or as I like to call them, Chief Starving Bear Image Enhancement Inc. Their program puts Weight Watchers, Nutrisystem, and Mahatma Ghandi to shame.
In addition, the changes to the dining hall portion sizes have done the impossible. They are solving Hillsdating.
I will admit that I may be giving them too much credit here. Though no one singular change will bring about the end of Hillsdating, we can still celebrate the small incremental successes on our road to eventual victory.
I am pleased to report that I forsee the reduced portion sizes bringing about the end of the “Saga date.” The constant up and down to get more food ensures that Hillsdale’s homeschool heartthrobs spend more time standing in line and less time naming future progeny, rendering any dining hall dinner date dead on arrival. I am certain that in time, the “Saga date,” much like Garden Party, will soon become a thing of the past, a distant memory remembered only by upperclassmen.
So when you get your half-portion of pasta salad or roast beef, though it is disheartening, keep your chin up. Know that what you are enduring will most certainly end in some good.
Virtus tentamine gaudet.
Nick Treglia is a sophomore studying applied mathematics.
