It’s 3 a.m. at Amherst. The usual pile of left-behind work is precariously piled atop a desk as you loll around drowsily on your bed, your head urging you to work but your body refusing to oblige. Silence pervades the air. Only the faint tick-tock of the alarm clock can be heard, teasing you as the minutes wilt into yesterday. Closing your eyes, the heavy monotony of the late hour persuades you to go sleep. Just as you drift off into unconsciousness, a low, disturbing rumble erupts, making a sound akin to a very disgruntled moose. You flop over as you quickly realize the great tragedy of the night: you’re hungry.
Okay — no big deal. Best solution to an unhappy belly? Food, of course!
Hunger immediately puts you on your feet, something your mind futilely tried to do just a few minutes before. You rush out to the common room, addressing your fellow nocturnal comrades and asking them each for sustenance. Nope, nothing to be had. In fact, everyone else is famished as well. Sobbing mentally, you despair at the truth of the name “starving college students.”
But wait! There’s still hope!
You rush eagerly to the bulletin board, pleased at your own spark of genius: delivery.
Only 10 digits lie between you and yummy in your tummy! Trembling with a mixture of hunger and excitement, you fumble at your cell for the correct numbers to Wings over Amherst. As your eyes scan the godly page, you notice something that nearly stopped your heart — the schedule.
No delivery past 3:00 a.m.
Crap. What is this madness?
Whether it’s Schwemm’s or that Subway around the corner, food remains the elusive Waldo of Amherst after three. Because Val closes at the ridiculously early hour of 7:30 p.m., midnight munchies can become the bane of Amherst students’ existence. Even Antonio’s closes around one. Students are left with two options: consume a gratuitous amount of ramen every week or stay hungry. The first option is a heart attack waiting to happen, and the second is simply unsatisfying. What is a poor college student to do?
Amherst students are not Priuses; we concede that we are economically inefficient beings, and therefore we require more food than is used for work output. Rather, Amherst students are Hummers. We demand to be engorged with excessive amounts of fuel. Well, alright, maybe we aren’t that ravenous. But the fact remains: students who stay up late, whether to work or just to socialize, get hungry late at night. Left with nothing to feed ourselves, productivity drops and time is often wasted searching for an edible holy grail.
Before pillows become victim to furious nomming, before students prostitute themselves for a single bite, before zombie versus humans become reality, the College needs to reconsider its late-night food options. If the collective grumble of empty stomachs isn’t enough to convince them, maybe good ol’ capitalism will. Imagine the market for consumable material after midnight — a simple all-night food stand will have a virtual monopoly on campus. Big kids have big appetites, so please, let us dine!
