Letters to University Administrators

Thursday, September 11, 2008

Read Struggling Air Force One To Begin Selling Passenger Tickets. I think this is like the third article I wrote for The Onion, but it was put into this issue, which is made up of extra articles written before the staff's week-long break last week.


Struggling for content and inspired by Robert Popper of Look Around You, perhaps the greatest television program ever, I came up with this potential blog-post generator: writing stupid e-mails to random Georgetown bureaucrats.

Last night I wrote to Josetta Moore, who, according to the Dining website, is Food and Beverage Director. She is obviously bad at her job, because she has yet to respond, but if she does, I will share it later. Here's the e-mail:


Ms. Moore:

Hello. My name is Jack Stuef and I am the President of the Georgetown University Soft Drink Society (GUSDS), a small group of friends on campus who get together to share with one other our love of soft drinks. We're not SAC-funded yet, but we're working on it.

Anyway, I'm sure, as Food and Beverage Director, you are quite aware of the selection of soft drinks at your cafeteria, or, as you are now, a collection of restaurants inside a former cafeteria. I have to commend you on them. From Coke to Diet Coke to Cherry Coke, and, if we're feeling a little crazy, Sprite, your establishment has some of the best Coke products in the business, and soft-drink aficionados such as ourselves are more than happy to drink at Leo's together quite often. Every once in awhile your syrup-to-water ratios are skewed so badly that we have to spit our drinks out, but that is a rare occurrence, and we are used to performing such an action whenever we take club trips out to soft-drink tastings.

Unfortunately, I am sorry to say, we now have some problems.

First, I have to say our club had high hopes for The Diner, the new restaurant that has leased space from you on the bottom level. However, the owners of this restaurant have failed to meet our expectations. They seem to have gotten the decor correct, but the soft-drink service is lacking severely. We assumed, for one, that these restauranteurs would install a classic soda fountain in their new restaurant, because this is a diner, and everybody on campus knows how much our club enjoys a good retro soft drink. They did not. I can understand this, perhaps, because the cost of a soda fountain can be prohibitive (we are currently fund-raising for one of our own). However, if you can't even get a fountain and a proper soda jerk, I at least expect table service. The other day, I asked a rather large woman with glasses who was wiping off our table if I could get a waitress over to our booth so we could order some root-beer floats, but she just laughed at me. This was very disconcerting.

Now these restauranteurs may have quashed our hopes for The Diner, but at least I can count on Leo's traditional high-quality, right? WRONG. Ms. Moore, where have the blue cups gone? Those cups were the cornerstone of our experience at your former dining-hall. Now, with all of these restaurants, not only do we still have to procure beverages ourselves, but you have taken away our blue cups too? This is shameful. I know this, just like the removal of trays, is not just a way for your corporation, ARAMARK, to greedily keep costs down, but then why have you done this to us? I assume this has something to do with your corporation's heroic attempts to help the environment, but I can't figure out how. Please enlighten us.

Now I know Leo's is very popular (practically every freshman and sophomore I know has a meal plan!), but we think there are a few problems. We don't want to have to use our meals at one of your competitors' campus dining halls, so we hope we can reach a resolution on these matters.

We look forward to hearing from you.


Jack Stuef
President
Georgetown University Soft Drink Society