LETTER: Don’t come, eat and leave

To the editor:

I hate complaining. I really do. I may gripe and may express dislike in what I see, but I really hate to complain. With that said I would like simply summarize what happened at an activity recently and appeal to everybody’s courtesy. As an officer of one of the many student and national academic associations on campus I and other officers were waiting for one of our events to start. It was to be a simple lecture and movie night; something we did every year at around the same time. Our speaker, the department head, had arrived and we were waiting for the time to start when a large group of students started coming in. You can imagine our excitement to see so many people show up, but it was soon replaced by puzzlement as they started to help themselves to the pizza we had set up for the event. We decided that if people were that hungry we had best start and since it was almost time, and we had so many people it was easily done. Unfortunately we discovered that most of the people who had been so eager to take our food were not at all interested to stay, even to eat it. Many of us officers and others tried to convince them to stay, even if it were just for the half hour lecture on the movie. We got a few, but most left with their pizza in tow. I understand the “free food” condition at all universities in the world. I have attended events before just for the food, but I do think that there is a line to draw here. I would simply ask that if you are going to eat somebody else’s food, that you at least wait for them to start and at least eat it there. You don’t have to leave a tip, but at least say “Thank you.” There is a difference between being fed and being rude.

Dan Allred