Duke Student Government announced Friday that it would be piloting a program for students who do not want to eat alone but do not otherwise have friends to eat with, citing personal experience and vehement hatred from large populations of the student body.
According to a recent study by the shockingly-still-present Duke Student Government Research Unit, a whopping 77 percent of the current DSG senate reported their network of friends at Duke to be “less than a dozen people.” Most of them reported eating alone more than 15 times per week, as few students wish to speak to them or learn anything about them. This is primarily out of the fear that if students get too close, the senators might bite.
“You see why our meetings go on so long, right?” said one DSG executive board member. “Most of us have so little friends outside the organization so we use DSG senate as one of our few means of human interaction...other than dominating class discussion and annoying our peers and professors, of course.”
The details of the program still are in the works. However, reports say the space likely would be a table somewhere in the West Union with a picture or placard noting that it was a “Dining with Strangers” space and that people sitting at that table likely were “wackos,” “lame-o’s”—or worse, associated with the Duke Student Government and thus should be avoided. Among the spaces under consideration is a small alcove near JB’s Chophouse offering a quiet environment. This presents an opportunity for diners to be kept hidden from nearby friends or even loose acquaintances who might save them from DSG’s wrath once they have sat down.
“We’re super pumped about the potential this program is going to have,” one anonymous senator, poising himself for a DSG Vice President position but blissfully unaware that everyone hates him and he probably will lose, told Monday Monday. “Most of us are so self-absorbed and petty that we don’t otherwise have any friends to sit with. Providing a space for us to engage with strangers in a non-threatening environment—a safe space, if you will—will be productive not only to our legislative capacities, but also to our secretly dismal levels of self-esteem.”
One high-ranking DSG executive board member reported that she alienated each and every one of her friends and allies on the way to the top of the food chain. As such, she hopes this new space will provide the opportunity to recruit a new class of people to eventually bully, manipulate and subsequently estrange.
“Who knows,” she told Monday Monday. “Maybe I’ll even make one cry.”
“I’m really excited about the synergies this program is going to provide,” another DSG senator said. “Last year, we secured a safe space in Perkins and in the Sanford Building, so we’re really excited about another place people can go to be sheltered from the real world. We’ve already advocated for a bunch of other stuff most Duke students don’t really want, but it looks really good on our resumes, so like, why stop now? I mean, you saw how poorly the Zagster bike share program turned out, but it sure does look awesome on my McKinsey application.”
When asked how he felt about the program, an anonymous geed whom Monday Monday met in the CAPS lobby said he thought the proposal was “irrelevant.”
“They say that it’s supposed to help people like me who have social anxiety about eating alone,” he said while we waited for our appointments. “First of all, what makes them think the way to solve my social anxiety is to force me to talk to strangers? And second of all, why wouldn’t I just eat alone in my room—or like, not in West Union?”
The student body and its counterpart, the anxious student body, reportedly are ambivalent. The larger collective of Duke students has made it explicitly clear that the only thing it wants DSG to focus its efforts on is bringing merchants-on-points back to consistent hours during the day. In spite of this, students have come to realize that the only way to deal with DSG is just to ignore them.
“Realistically,” said one high-ranking member of the Student Affairs department, “these student-leaders have the attention span of a goldfish. Sometimes they get particularly chirpy and get utterly useless programs like the dildo workshop that drain their budget as a result. But for the most part, we just let them get whatever it is off their chest—maybe they encourage the Editorial Board to write something vicious about it, wait a couple of days and then never respond to their follow-up email. Usually they just forget about it and leave us alone.”
When asked if he’d been successful in employing the tactic, the staff member said, “Oh yes. Nine times out of ten, I buy myself out of a month’s worth of lunch meetings with them before these same kids come back into my office whining about something completely different.”
DSG reportedly is piloting the dining program throughout campus, as senators plant themselves in the West Union and Marketplace holding signs that read “I’m open to conversation!” The Duke student body is encouraged to avoid any eye contact with the senators, for fear that they may defund your tuition—or worse, beg you to endorse them in their next campaign by changing your profile picture to that one photograph you have with each other from freshman year.
Written while eating perfectly alone at The Loop...y’all remember The Loop?
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