This weekend was homecoming weekend. An infamously large celebration filled with lots of parties and inevitable hangovers. I managed to partake in the festivities fairly untraditionally. Saturday morning I watched the parade with some of the other honors students from the lounge of the 5^th floor of Vandiver Hall. We had donuts, and I sat in my pajamas and watched as the parade started, only about twenty minutes late. I didn’t go to the football game, but I did prop my window open and listen. I did go to a party, but left early and avoided any chance of a hangover. However, perhaps most memorable about my homecoming weekend happened Sunday night, when I attempted to get a quick meal at the University Center.

First, a prelude to the main dining areas on campus: There are a few cafés dotted around campus, Kent Café in the library, cafés in some of the buildings, one at the River Campus, with fairly limited hours. There is Rowdy’s, the fairly expensive, always-open, slightly fast-food style dining facility. There is the one and only all-you-can-eat dining area in the Towers Complex, sadly, a far walk from Vandiver Hall. Then there is the University Center, or UC, also rumored to be overpriced. The UC contains The Beanery, The Skylight Terrace, and tons of little commercial style vendors. This is the closest venue to my hall, Vandiver. Hours at all these places are fairly limited on the weekend, especially at the UC.

I’ve had some bad experiences at the UC (I’d advise you to stay away from the mushroom stroganoff, just saying), as well as good of course (got to love the pizza, pasta, those delicious sandwiches from the Skylight Terrace, and the all you can eat brunches on Sundays), but being a vegetarian, you get used vegetarian dishes that don’t seem to ever actually have been tasted by the people that serve them. One thing I have always liked is that the Player’s Grill has meatless veggie-burgers that don’t taste like carrots and processed spinach.

So on this Sunday of homecoming, I had been working on homework for a large majority of the afternoon, and really needed a quick break. At 5:15 I asked my boyfriend, Tim, who is in the Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity, to grab a quick dinner with me before his fraternity’s chapter meeting at 7 o’clock. He said sure, but he needed to wait for his laundry, which was going to be done in 15 minutes. We gathered and folded laundry, and embarked to the UC at 5:45. I had a veggie burger craving, and Tim wanted pizza. Tim promptly grabbed a slice of cheese, some chips, and water while I grabbed water, and waited. The line at the Player’s Grill was long. Six peoples’ orders later, I am the only person in line while the two workers and one manager go on about making fries and putting more patties on the grill. Eventually, one of the workers noticed that they hadn’t asked me what I’d like. “A veggie burger,” I said. I was greeted with a confused look while the worker turned to her boss and I heard her question, “She wants a veggie burger?” He turns to me and says, “Let me see if we have any.” My heart sank.

A few people were gathering in line behind me as the manager emerged from the back room with a bag of frozen patties and said, “It will take about eight minutes. Is that alright?” I assured him it was fine. Eight minutes was not a huge deal after I waited in line for that long just for him to tell me that. I grabbed a box of fries and started to munch.  Approximately seven customers later, and half a box of fries, I see them eyeing the veggie burger. They flip the burger as the manager finds a guy that is apparently his manager. He asks, “How do you know when a veggie burger is done?” The big manager says, “It takes about eight minutes to grill it and five to fry it.” “You can fry it?” the regular manager had echoed my thoughts. The big manager turns to me and asks, “Would you care if we fried it, it would cook faster.” I was appalled. Frying a veggie burger is like a mockery of all the healthy reasons I choose to be a vegetarian. I told him, “It has been cooking for a pretty long time, I’m sure it can’t take that much longer on the grill.” He said, “So you don’t want it fried?” I guess my subtlety was a little too subtle. “No,” I replied.

So I waited, and I waited, and I waited, and about 5 customers later, I waited some more. Each person that got their burger before me gave me a sympathetic and slightly puzzled look. Then finally, it was time, my fries were mostly gone, and the manager offered to top it anyway I liked. I told him that the usual was fine. At 6:23, I reached the table where Tim, who had finished almost all his food while he puzzled what was going on, was seated. He had to be back in his room in about five minutes to be ready for his formal meeting. As I sat down all I could say was, “The joys of being a vegetarian.”

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