Jeff Chan

“Ridiculous” Rules

Today, I witnessed the most hypocritical “rule” I’ve ever seen. Our five-years-old school has a tradition of something called a “food festival.” The festivals are held during lunch probably once every semester. It gives the school clubs a chance to come out and sell food. The food itself is not cheap at all, but it’s a rare opportunity to be able to buy fast food and the yummy stuff at school nowadays. So people are usually excited about it; food usually sells out lightning fast with around 20 stalls, but not this year.

This year, we didn’t have a food festival last semester because of our old-school principal but that’s beyond the reach of this blog since people from my school indeed read this blog. We had our first food festival in this school year today, with a catch. All food must be bought with “tickets.” Previously, it was essentially a cash-food exchange. Now they require students to purchase tickets then use tickets to buy the food because of “state law regulation” and “protection of the students.”

The first food festival this year was to be scheduled on Valentine’s Day but was “postponed” because clubs were protesting against this change. The reasons were clear; the change would most likely result in a loss for clubs because no one could predict the effect of the “tickets,” as it would be a hassle for most students. This time, they offered an incentive for clubs to sell food again, with same rules applying: they would advertise the food festival like crazy. Still one more catch, tickets could not be refunded. Though they can be used in next food festival, who is it to say that there will be a next one?

The show was up today. Out of the ~45 student organizations on campus, only seven came forth to sell food. Though all food was sold out, but clearly the clubs ordered less food to sell. The truth remains: tickets are a hassle to the students. Here I am to refute the reasons they gave for forcing ticket sales upon us.

I was walking out of class today for lunch and saw people start scrambling for food while many were turned down because they didn’t know they have to use tickets. Then, the most hypocritical thing popped out and almost made me throw up, seriously. Next to these stalls were the normal school lunch lines, where people could actually use “cash” to buy food. Amazing!

I guess school officials failed to realize the obvious point that people use cash to buy food all the time in schools, without any problems. Our school lunch lines are serviced by students, and so are food festival stalls. What difference does it make? Why do we pay taxes for such intelligent people to work for us.

I love the smell of irony.