Colgate Senior Discovers New COOP and New Lows

HAMILTON, NY— Students returning from off-campus study sometimes experience a culture shock upon returning to campus and to the U.S. However, shock does not quite describe the feelings of one senior, Martin Larsen, returning from the Geneva Study

Group as he re-encountered the Coop this fall. After being jaded by the high cost of living and mocked by snooty native French-speakers in ways he barely understood, the senior longed to gorge himself on endless mozz sticks and onion rings.

Unfortunately, Larsen’s beautiful plans could never be realized. The old ways of filling a to-go container to the brim, barely being able to close the lid, and paying for it with a single meal swipe are long over. Students are allowed only one likely need the COOP; students could only take one entrée and stand there as the staff laughed at their miserable selection of sides; and to top it off students had to ask for a to-go container at the register and hope it wasn’t one of the three days a week when none were available. Then they are allowed the opportunity of holding everyone else up as they transferred the pitiful mockery of what the COOP once meant from the useless metal basket to an undersized plastic container.

When the senior asked a staffer how this affected the unlimited meal plans, she replied “unlimited meals does not mean unlimited food.” Larsen, mistaking this response as a jesting riddle, probed the staffer further as she explained that students on that plan could swipe whenever they wanted as long as it wasn’t between 11 and 4. “It’s an unlimited plan except for the limitations.” Larsen stumbled out of the COOP, convinced he had crossed into the Twilight Zone on his way back from Geneva or that he needed to drink more in order understand the people who came up with these regulations.

At this time, Larsen was overwhelmed with regret for having pushed so hard to get rid of Sodexo. The evil you know is better than the one that tries to rip you off with overpriced sushi, a meal that perplexingly cannot be part of a meal plan.