Yearning for the Frist of yesteryear

Never again will we get to see the look of profound disappointment on our inebriated classmates' faces as the Frist Food Gallery's portcullis, as if mocking the hungry, slowly closes at 2 a.m.. Never again will we be able to take a 1:47 a.m. study break and get the one treat we really want — froyo with Reese's Pieces and Oreo crumbles. Never again will large crowds of undergraduates be able to laugh at each other as they stumble down the notorious grand staircase of shame because, sadly, there is no grand staircase that leads to Café Vivian — and who wants to be drunk in Café Viv? Dark environments with Alicia Keys and Santana on repeat are bad accompaniments for those about to boot. The people who might actually like to just chill or study in there now have to deal with all the rowdy post-street business. Would you put frat boys and poetry readings together? I don't think so.

Closing the gallery early and moving the pizza to a place that seems so uncomfortable and un-pizza is just the beginning of the "Times are Changing" movement. The people who want the healthy food, AKA the majority of our female student population, have to suffer just as much as everyone else. It all comes down to one word: saladology. I mean, I almost don't need to say anything about this because it even sounds too lame to function. The lines were close to horrendous before, but now they're unbearable. We can't just pick what we want when we're finally up to bat, we have to have our five items all planned out ahead of time. Who wants five vegetable items on their salad? The best part of the classic Frist salad was the wealth of protein options, but now getting tuna on top requires giving up an appendage, and if you want a mix of proteins, tough. "Saladology" seems to be all about teaching us how jacked up oil prices can make us as cranky as possible, that mixed greens are an extremely rare delicacy, and that dried cranberries should be grouped with all the meat choices, because they now apparently come from some kind of animal.

One senior girl who was a former die-hard Frist salad devotee complained, "There are no more good fat free dressings, in fact, only deliberately crappy dressings." When asked if she could think of anything new that she liked at Frist, another very upset student replied, "Umm, yeah, they make parfaits ... but with [expletive deleted] cantaloupe. Who eats cantaloupe with yogurt and granola?"

Who knew we were so passionate about Frist food? I think it stems from the fact that a lot of us, especially we Wilson and Butler kids, considered Frist a big part of our underclass experience. Most of us got pretty sick of the dining hall fare by sophomore year, and Frist became our escape. We were all willing to wait until 8 p.m. to eat and charge an inordinate amount of money for what wasn't covered by the meager $4.75 we were allotted for late dinner — Frist was just that good. The innocent frosh have no idea how bad they have it, but the poor sophomores ... I feel for you guys.

The independent upperclassmen who haven't yet mastered cooking for themselves have also taken a huge blow. Unable to benefit from the late-meal price reduction that dining services is offering to supposedly keep people happy, many independent students have said that Frist is just too much trouble and too expensive. Frist also used to be a convenient place for eating clubbers to dine with their indie friends when guest meals ran out, but now the option seems anything but convenient.

If it ain't broke, don't fix it. As one student put it, "Honestly, Frist has been so great for so long. Why did they change everything?" Princetonians like their traditions, and in five short years, Frist has become to many of us as "Princeton" as an arch sing, a precept or the Street. With the passion I've seen from so many students about this issue, I wouldn't be surprised if we soon had another megaphoned, around-the-clock protest outside the student center. Laura Berner is a psychology major from Rye, N.Y. She can be reached at lberner@princeton.edu.