HUNGER CLEANSES THE SPIRIT

You arrive at your house dining hall Friday night. You forgot to eat lunch because you were so engrossed in shopping your 12 p.m. and 1 p.m. Core classes. You're hungry. Your mind is one with the savory baked tofu. All is well until you arrive at the checker's desk and realize...you left your ID at the registrar's, it's after 5 p.m. and you live in Dunster. Bummer. You can't eat.

The new edict from the dining authorities, handed down just before the semester began, states that any person without an ID will not be admitted to meals. The rationale is to protect the cards, suddenly made more precious than gold by the advent of Crimson Cash.

But there is a better way to protect cash than by barring ID-less students from the dining halls. Students should still be able to orally tell checkers their ID numbers in order to eat as long as they do not bring guests in with them. That way, there is no way students will be taking money away from other students' ID cards.

And why the hubbub now? Students theoretically have been able to snarf guest meals off unsuspecting students' lost ID cards ever since the ID card dining system came into place.

The real place to crack down should be in Loker Commons. When was the last time an employee at the coffee shop or Mexican place checked your picture against your face? What if some poor first-year dropped his or her ID while staring at the Alice in Wonderland display screen and came back later to find the ID stripped of all its Crimson cash?

Administrators should leave the dining halls alone and focus on some real problems.