The Potato

Cortland- Hung-over students swarm the dining hall in slow bulkish movements, sulking their way to the waffle maker, juice machines and Made-to-order egg station.  It’s an eerie scene watching the students racking their brains to simultaneously recall the missing memories from the night before and decide which carb would best soak up the alcohol.

We met Clarke Degroat, a senior at SUNY Cortland, still in his Armani Exchange shirt and silver chain, as he rubbed his aching forehead at a sticky booth. Degroat admits that he slept in the booth all night, as he makes his way to the breakfast pizza tray.

Many students did the same as Degroat, partied too hard at the new nightclub right on campus. SUNY Cortland’s primary food distributor, ASC, has been trying to search for the perfect way to raise even more revenue for the service. The answer was clear. After numerous surveys across campus, the executives at ASC came to the obvious answer that the thing college kids love more than anything is drinking and all-you-can-eat. Hence why the school has created an 18 and over dance club located at right at Neubig Hall, the school’s most popular eating establishment.

Last night was the first trial run of Neubig’s night club, The Dark Dragon, to see if the investment in five hundred strobe lights would be profitable for the change over. Hundreds of students entered the dark room and skeptically filled their plastic cups with the soda machine that was filled with drafts.

Wes C. Cheney waited on line at the mongo grill turned make-your-own mixed drink station, “We can use our meal plan for the cover which is cool but I don’t like Ange serving me shots,” he said about the pros and cons of the establishment. Little did the students know that the cover was an outrageous thirty dollars. When told this, Cheney just shrugged and said he needed to use up his Dragon Dollars anyway. The expected profit from just the first night of The Dark Dragon is estimated in the high thousands.

Workers at Neubig are not so pleased with the change. The staff’s shifts were all extended as well as the amount of duty’s they had.

“I went from cleaning dishes to cleaning up after the kids who chundered everywhere,” said long time ASC worker Al Whitaker. Whitaker has been working for Neubig since he was a student in the mid seventies as well as living in the small room behind the silverware tray. Last night’s changeover has prevented him from sleeping in forty-eight hours. “They didn’t even pay me over time, the school just offered me a lifetime supply of apple slices and peanut butter trays.”

As far as continuing The Dark Dragon for the future, a spokesperson from ASC was too busy counting all of their money to confirm or deny the question.