in my humble opinion Midnight Snacks, Please

Author: Daniel Roberts

In addition to the heightened consumption of alcohol, there are other elements that make the daily schedule of an average college student radically different from that of anyone not in college. It's undeniable - we don't live like normal people.

Now, perhaps some of you go to class in the morning and then go straight to the library. By the time you eat dinner, you have completed your homework and you relax for a bit, then ease into bed by 10 or 11. What are you, 40?

Here's how the rest of us spend a day - Get out of class around 2 or 3. Return to dorm room and waste time (popular choices include hallway wiffle ball, DVDs, napping). Suddenly, it is time for dinner.

Then, soon enough, it is midnight and thanks to various "exciting" distractions (iChat, baby) you have killed three hours since dinner doing absolutely nothing. The worst part is that you were so busy thinking about doing work that you have become extremely hungry.

It is 11 p.m. and your only option is The Grille, creator of some holes (in your wallet), filler of other holes (your arteries). Thanks a lot, Doctor Feel Good-now-but-sick-later!

The problem is that the dining hall schedule is unrealistic. I eat dinner at 7 and then I go start my work, and by 11 or midnight, I am hungry enough for another meal.

How do I know I am not the only one who experiences this aching late-night starvation? I know because every guy on my hall emerges from his room at the same time each night like clockwork. We go eat sandwiches, quesadillas and burgers.

Whatever you order, it does not matter - rest assured that you will not be getting something healthy, and you will be spending green. Could you even imagine having gone out to eat every single night of the week back in high school? You would have thought the idea was absurd.

Yet you probably did not have a restaurant a mere 30 steps from your bedroom.

Why can't one dining hall re-open at night, just for an hour, for those of us who are awake and hungry? I know the campus would rejoice if this were to happen.

When I have proposed this in the past, people claim that the school does not have the money to pay dining hall employees to come back late at night, and they laugh like it's a ridiculous idea anyway. C'mon, no money? How did we find the cash to buy those old, used tires? That had to be pretty expensive. And so worth it!

But fine, let's just say we buy that "no money" line. Well, how about Dolci or the Gamut Room? These are student-run eateries. There are student employees already in the dining halls. It may not be a stretch to think that a few of them, if paid, would work a one-hour "snack time" shift. Right?

Just imagine - it's midnight, you've reached an impasse in your paper and sitting at your desk zoning out isn't helping the creative juices flow. So hey, you head over to Proctor and have a little steak, maybe some soufflÈ, perhaps even a couple sushi rolls. Then you return to Gifford rejuvenated and ready to analyze that Dick named Moby once and for all!

I'm kidding. That would be outrageous. But if you forget the sushi and cake, this idea is pretty logical. Just get a couple of kids to show up at Proctor every night around 10 - don't even open up the kitchen area - and put out some fruit, cereal, bagels and ice cream. This could be the greatest Middlebury innovation since the murder of the Midd Montreal Maple Leaf logo.

Daniel Roberts '09 is an English major from Newton, Mass.