The UMass Boston No-Dining Club
How UMass Boston became the only university in the known universe without a dining club
This post is loosely based on an FSU email blast.
Once upon a time, many moons ago, our university used to have a dining club, just like any other normal university in the world. It was no Harvard dining club, but it was there when we needed to bring in guests, strike a conversation, or just munch on a day old salad and semi-edible chicken in peace and quiet, far from the hoards of rambunctious students.
Then COVID hit, and when we finally came back to campus we found out that three things were missing:
The old science building was torn down, not a moment too soon. Unfortunately, the “stunning quad” that replaced it is stunningly underwhelming.
Any semblance of academic credibility, thanks to our Leaders who spent the good part of 2020-2022 thoroughly destroying and dismantling merit, fairness and equality, and flushing our reputation down the toilet while we weren’t there to call them out for it.
The university dining club.
At first the club was converted into a COVID clinic, which made sense. After all, in Fall 2021 things were still somewhat touch-and-go. However, as the months turned into years and the masks came off, the dining club remained absent, as a symbol of what has become of our health-promoting university.
We then asked out illustrious Provost Borg: Will we ever get our dining club back?
Yes and no, replied the Provost. Yes club, no dining.
Later we found out that the re-branded University Dining space (not club) has been re-opened and made available to faculty, staff, and graduate students on M-F from 11:30am-2pm. There is nothing in the room: no food, no water, no napkins or utensils, not even a microwave, and the only living soul around is a student who has been hired to document who enters, which is strange because there is nothing there to steal.
Faculty and staff have expressed clear desire to 1) reopen the University Dinning Club with food services and 2) expand the hours of space availability to 9am-5pm – and perhaps even serve coffee.
However, we soon learned that it was too much to ask. Why? The all-powerful “SPACE (Space Planning and Capital Expenditure) Committee”, consisting of our Supreme Leaders, might prefer to use the space as a rental revenue stream. For the money! that’s our REAL motto, except that no one has ever rented the place for anything, as far as we know.
We were then informed that we had to petition the all-powerful SPACE Committee and that it was best if faculty from multiple colleges were part of the petition. Alas, even a petition with 188 signatures and comments did not help, and at the time of writing, the former dining club, sorry, SPACE, the final frontier, still stands in its barren, inglorious emptiness.
So, next time you bring a guest or a faculty candidate, you have two options: 1) bring your own food or 2) go to the campus center cafeteria, stand in line with another 200 people, and pray that you find an empty table so you can have a decent conversation. It won’t hurt to say a silent prayer that the faculty candidate, who has not yet run for the hills at the sight of our permanent construction site of a campus, is desperate enough to stick around.