To be completely fair, I did not expect to enter the dining hall on my first day as a Loomis Chaffee Pelican and meet the harrowing situation that is our toast machine. The fear in my tour guide’s eyes cannot be replicated as she explained the intricacies of this machine; a machine that seemed to require a technician’s accuracy for the majority of morning caffeine-deprived Pelicans.
Thankfully, fellow students have realized such a philosophical loophole. With most paying a small fortune for tuition that supposedly includes a “state-of-the-art” dining hall, the toaster stands out as, well, an obsolete slab of metal with a high voltage resistance in a state-of-the-art dining hall. It is seen by hundreds of students and teachers on the island every day, its silver outline glistening against the golden drops of sunlight from the ceiling, the black handles with the monotonous yet powerful words “speed” and “power”. The dark red fluorescent lights glow with the crackling of the darkened metal tracks. It draws to the laymen’s eye the sight of power, prestige, and above all, inclusivity.
However, multiple issues cited with the machine have greatly lowered its reverence in the LC community. These issues, compiled by the Student Rights Against Toast Machine Association (STRATMA), came from two facets. First, despite the existence of an unusually large pile of rolls conveniently placed right next to the toast machine, the phenom-looking power is wholly unable to cook the unassuming roll. This moral dilemma is further strengthened by the fact that, secondly, the roll burns when cooked.
The first paradigm is that it almost seems as if the designers thought that the simple statement “rolls should not be cooked on a toast machine” should lead to “rolls being burned” instead of “the toast machine is stopped”. What blatant violation of Occam’s Razor!
Save your tears, Thomas, for the second dilemma is also reinstated every time a student’s bagel slides out of the bottom chute onto the gridded metal surface. The very revelation of its existence has been utterly failed by the toast machine. Despite its extremely hot surface, the crust, the essence of every good bagel, remains soaky, musty, and wet. The disrespect for our very inferential belief is unprecedented. What is the purpose of a toast machine, if not to deliver crispy toast? If failed, why is it not an utter disrespect for our modern utilitarian ideologies about having machines for their purpose? Are we losing our utilitarianism as an efficiency-based species? Did the maker of the toaster really intend to disrespect common logic while making the toaster?
Sophomore Ryan Kvaler was among those present at the duo-annual protests organized by STRATMA. At around 7:30 on February 24th, an estimated 350 Pelicans from all four classes crowded the dining hall and congregated around the toast machine. Four pitchforks had previously been donated to STRATMA’s efforts, likely by Campus Safety, and were then used to “tell what’s going on inside the toaster”.
“It’s certainly amazing,” Kvaler said, “that such a mass of students were able to wake up caffeine-less and support a greater cause.” Despite the efforts, though, only miniscule upgrades have been given to the toast machine, which is currently “under investigation” by dining hall staff. Unfortunately, to the dismay of many students, the toast machine still continually fails to create the delicate, crispy bread desired by Loomis Chaffee’s 735 pelicans to this day.
