Welcome Week was awesome, wasn’t it!? From comedians, hypnotists, and magicians to hot dog eating contests, a club fair, classes starting, and prizes galore, I’d sure say it was! If you pass by anybody who works with the Office of Student Activities, I hope you’ll thank them for countless hours of time and dedication to make the entire week a success.

As students at the University of New Haven, we’re expected to practice time management just like Britney Spears is expected to practice singing terribly. In other words, we’re good at it.

As students, we have to balance our class schedule with our social life, our clubs and activities, and our part-time jobs. If we miss an assignment for class, we get an F; if we miss club meetings, we lose credibility with our friends and fellow club members; if we show up late for our job, we get fired. It’s pretty much common sense. So why can’t others act the way that we’re expected to act?

Last Wednesday, dinner was shut down in Bartels and instead of being served there, it was served in the Bixler/Botwinik Quad. The Steve Gregory Band was jammin’ along to some classic cover band songs, myself and other staff members of The Charger Bulletin were handing out the first issue and giving away golden tickets (congrats to our winners, $500  gift cards were given out!), and various UNH athletic teams were around the area. The only thing missing at 4:30 was dinner. Everything continued as planned at 4:45: except dinner. 5:00 rolled around, and guess what? Yup. Everything except dinner.

Standing at The Charger Bulletin table, quite a few people came up to me asking when they could eat dinner.

So 45 minutes after it was supposed to start, the insanely long line that had formed was finally allowed to get dinner. At 7:00, instead of continuing an extra 45 minutes, dining services stopped at their scheduled end time.

If we’re expected to handle time management so well, then why can’t others on campus?
Now, don’t get me wrong. In no way am I blaming any particular person in dining services. In fact, the ones that I deal with on a day-to-day basis are some of the warmest, friendliest people on campus. And these are the very people that I saw working hard to setup as fast as possible.

As a quick side note, it’s actually kind of sad how much recognition a good professor or a good dean gets, but our great faculty don’t get so much as a “thank you” many times. So from me, faculty, I thank you.

But this wasn’t the first time that things ran late with dining services, and somebody needs to be held accountable. I’m not mad, I just ask that next time you start on time. Nobody was hurt, nothing was done wrong…but saying that you will start at 4:30 should mean that you will, in fact, start at 4:30.

Oh. And as delicious as they still were, the pita chips weren’t even crunchy.