Disclaimer: This article is satirical and not meant to be taken seriously. Michael Kohut is not affiliated with Sodexo in any way.

Greetings plebeians. I am a representative of Sodexo, the multinational conglomerate — I mean, new friendly food service contractor here at the university. I would like to issue a formal request to the student body of Stony Brook to cease complaints and dissatisfaction with the food service changes that have just recently taken effect.

This company does its very best to provide the dining facilities here with the most acceptable food. We serve it in small portions as a way of helping you regulate your diet. We ensure that we provide enough variety to placate you, right before you would have erupted with rage from the sheer monotony of it all. We fix prices that ensure you’re bitter enough to realize you’re getting the shaft, but not bitter enough to actually do anything. But most importantly, we do it all with a smile.

Here at Sodexo, we’ve learned our lesson from the protests at Binghamton, Clark and DePauw Universities, among others. We now know that the best way to keep students passive — err, satisfied — is to make sure you’re just too hungry to care what you eat. 

We made a large effort to start from the beginning when we took over as the contractor here, making sure that most of the progress made while the previous food contractor was here was maintained, just with the unneeded fluff cut out.

Remember when you could buy a variety of fresh fruits and vegetables at the Grab and Go market in West Side Dining? Waste of shelf space. Remember when the options at the Asian food market in West Side Dining changed daily and not weekly? We thought the exact same thing: how annoying. So we changed it. Now the students can eat their favorite dishes every single day of the week. The Dosants (donut-croissants) at the coffee shop? Who needed them when you could have hours-old croissants?

Let’s talk about the variety of healthy options for a moment. The yogurt station at the SAC? Why waste more space when we could just put more salad? Gyros and Halal food at the Union? Why not just pasta? The Union Deli also didn’t need quite so many options; it’s just serving you pea brains!

Ahem. Sorry, maybe I went on a bit too long, I wasn’t sure if you people could catch on. We didn’t “ruin” the food service, we streamlined it. We didn’t eliminate variety, we optimized it. Sodexo is a multinational corporation that cares like a mom-and-pop burger joint.

I urge you students considering complaining or organizing to first think about our shareholders. If we need to spend money on legal issues, that’s less money we can put into our food service division, so really you’d be hurting yourselves. If you’re bothered by treatment of our employees here at the university, I urge you to consider how much fair treatment could potentially cost us before speaking out. After all, we’re running a business here, and that’s why we bid higher than the other suppliers in the first place.

Personally, I’m offended by the idea that you think we’re cheating you out of something you deserve. Sodexo is dedicated to giving you exactly what you need, so stop being so greedy.