Agavni Mehrabi ’26 is planning to double major in government and finance. Outside of The Flat Hat, Agavni is a member of WCWM 90.9 and Archery Club. Email Agavni at almehrabi@wm.edu.
The views expressed in the article are the author’s own.
When I moved into campus early and a woman in the Integrated Science Center kindly informed me that Drips-and-Sips wasn’t available, I chalked it up to bad timing. “Oh, it’ll probably start working like usual by the time the first day of classes comes around,” I reassured myself.
Fast forward to the eve of the first day of classes when someone walked up to my friend to complain about how Earl Gregg Swem Library’s Column 15 isn’t offering unlimited drinks for those with the All-Access dining plan, period. If you can’t believe the sentence you just read, trust that you are not dealing with an amateur. I wasn’t going to let some gossip ruffle my feathers, so I asked the baristas themselves. Alas, they did not refute the blasphemy.
I later learned that Starbucks at ISC, Boehly Cafe and the William and Mary Law School Cafe would at least be offering the sacred, money-saving system. But unless you’re a business student, a future attorney, a Ludwell exile or an ISC inhabitant at all times of the day… there is still reason to be upset.
Before anybody calls me dramatic, I must air out a reminder that the prices of signature lattes have risen dramatically due to the recent acquisition of what was previously known as Aroma’s in Sadler Center and Swem. And before any caffeine critic croons that it’s just coffee, I must be the harbinger of yet another upsetting announcement: the death of Griffin Deals.
Gone are the days when one could get a sandwich, a bag of chips and a soda virtually for free as a perk of the All-Access meal plan. I will admit that it was a little too good to be true when such a package was offered twice a day, at both made-to-order kitchens like Marketplace and Boehly as well as convenience store locations like Student Exchange and Tribe Market. Perhaps once a day would have been better for the school’s budget. But a complete extermination?
Eliminating this option from Marketplace may make sense as a means of preparing students for the demise of Campus Center. However, implementing a paywall behind the new kiosks at Boehly is brutal to someone who has two morning classes back to back and whose stomach wishes for just the smallest solace in the form of a meager lunch. My humble afternoon meal should not require a zero-sum choice between emptying one’s student loan-scarred pockets and a 20-minute walk to the nearest cafeteria.
One could fall for the misconception that the end of Griffin Deals has served as a solution to those who struggled to spend all of their dining dollars before the end of the school year when any leftover money would essentially be dumped down the drain. After all, the loss of Griffin Deals seemingly means there are now more places for people to spend their dining dollars besides coffee shops, giving those who dislike coffee more options on campus. However, there have always been an abundance of options to spend dining dollars, such as convenience stores, Chick-Fil-A and the Bake Shop, and places that offered Griffin Deals always also allowed people to deplete their dollars if they didn’t want to partake in a Griffin Deal. The extermination of Griffin Deals leading to more dining dollar opportunities on campus is merely an illusion; those opportunities have been there all along.
Though I may hold a grudge, I’m not so naive as to believe the school will care about such a trifling thing as feeding stomachs fashionably when our construction-depleted budget is just as hungry. Offering countless coffee cups and bottomless sandwich bundles is probably not in the administration’s best interest. I’m a finance major, after all; I’m well aware money is king and all that.
However, a more reasonable request I have to make up for the loss of Drips-and-Sips along with Griffin Deals concerns our dining halls’ breakfast schedules. As they stand currently, our breakfast schedule squelches the flow of fresh eggs, pancakes and the like at 10 a.m. so that lunch can begin at this time.
I would be willing to give this practice the benefit of the doubt if it was confined to the school week when one may possibly experience an unconventional morning hunger for hamburgers after a 9 a.m. class. But during the weekend? I cannot be the only college student who is just waking up at 10 a.m. since there are no classes to wake early for. In fact, I know that I am not the only college student with delayed morning rituals on the weekend since it is in our natural biological clocks to be late to bed and late to rise.
Even morning people go out, on occasion, on a Friday or Saturday night. When they do so, they most likely wake up a little bit later if they wish to maintain a healthy eight hours of sleep. And when they do so, their bare, yet barely awakened bellies would most likely appreciate an option that is between the extremes of a scant swath of cereal and a heavy serving of pizza.
Surely, it wouldn’t cost the school an extra penny to make the switch from breakfast to lunch a single hour later. Surely, making better decisions on all of these three points wouldn’t cost them nearly as much as it costs all of the students at the College combined to turn to Wawa, which doesn’t accept dining dollars, instead. Certainly, I’ve borne the brunt of the inflated laundry prices and the expenses of printing out words on paper. I think I’m speaking for many of us when I say I’d like to see a similar flexibility on the part of our friends in administration fixing the food costs.
CORRECTION (09/12/23): Article was updated by Sarah Devendorf, the Standards and Practices Editor to give credit to Zoe Davis for providing this article with the featured graphic.