Let them eat lemon bars

Despite all of the unpleasantries that my tumultuous freshman year at Miami entailed (online classes, political strife, getting hand sanitizer in my eyes when I’d go to wipe away my tears), there was one thing that always made my day just a little better: the dining hall desserts.

Unfortunately, and I hate to say it, the selection of dining hall desserts has declined in both variety and novelty this year.

Every day it’s the same old same old: vegan cookies or random fruit pies. And don’t even get me started on cupcakes. Who in their right mind likes this sorry excuse for a dessert? Cupcakes are like Tide Pods; they might look tasty but they aren’t fun to bite into.

What happened to the lemon bars? The pumpkin loaves? The carrot cakes? If I see one more pitiful chocolate chip cookie I might lose my mind. Of all the things that they could have tossed off the menu (vegan “fish” I’m looking at you), they take away my sweet, sweet, lemon bars.

I understand that this may seem like a minute complaint compared to other, more pressing, issues. I suppose the dining hall may have bigger vegan “fish” to fry than satisfying my sweet tooth. But I don’t think I’ve made it clear just how much those decadent desserts meant to me.

Picture entering your freshman year of college mid-pandemic. Different state, different lifestyle, next to no friends.

Sometimes that gosh darn pumpkin loaf was all I had to look forward to.

My heart may have felt like an empty shell of what it once was, but at least my stomach felt full. And you can’t really get that inner “fullness” from dry chicken or greasy pizza. Baked goods, in my opinion, are the only food category that have the ability to, even if just for a moment, make all your troubles melt away faster than butter on toast.

Why do you think there’s no Great British Sauteeing Show? Exactly.

I’ve tried to soldier through the pain of this unfilled void in my life, but I’m afraid I can’t take it any longer: I need to make a stand.

I simply cannot just stand idly by knowing that there are freshman out there that may never get to have the transformative experience of scarfing down a Miami Dining Hall lemon bar. It goes against the things that I hold dearest to my heart: equality and using food as a coping mechanism.

Students, now is the time to take action on this pertinent issue. Let’s let the dining halls know that we miss the desserts of the past and use our voices to enact change. Let’s go out and get those lemon bars back.