Dean Elmore Defends Lack of Trix in Dining Halls: “Trix are For Kids!”
There’s no rest for the wicked.
This is something I assumed Dean Elmore knew when he decided to step down from his position at Boston University. We watched the former dean smile and wave to his ex-colleagues as, with one mighty push, we launched him off into the Charles.
Initially we were worried the makeshift raft of Grubhub orders and hundred-dollar bills weren’t enough to keep the departing dean afloat, but Elmore seemed nothing if not at ease as he gently disappeared into the sunset.
An Elmore-less life at BU processed as any typical string of school days would, give or take some minor changes to the campus, including: the banishment of business majors, the addition of cows to Warren Towers’ “rooftop garden”, and, my personal favorite, the addition of Trix to the dining hall cereal selection.
Most BU students are pleasantly surprised with the changes that have taken place, but I know better than that.
Five days later, there was a disturbance in the air. I was munching on my burger and tots when I began to hear the rumors:
“Did you hear the Dean is back?”
As if on cue, Dean Elmore bursts into the dining hall with a tired, sad look in his eyes. He’s sopping wet and looks kinda different. The glowing green eyes and third arm confirms that it surely was the same dean we’d sent off onto the Charles almost a week before, for few other rivers could supply someone with such gnarly accessories.
He stopped in front of some kid in a booth and grunted.
“Hey, Elmore!” I shouted, throwing a scalding hot tater tot at his dripping head. “Whaddya doin’ here!? We sent you off into the Charles like the rest of the departing staff!”
The former dean gurgled and slowly stomped towards me. Feeling a bit uncomfortable, I used the long line for the Warren dining grill to create a body barrier between us, but I continued to press on:
“Pstpstpstpstpst! Go back to the river! You need to be reborn so you can go be Dean at Dean’s college! You’ll never make it by fall semester at this rate!”
The Charles River–tainted Elmore took one mighty whiff of the air and suddenly lost complete interest in my entire existence. As if it were automatic, the former dean began trudging over to the cereal station.
Unfortunately for him, there was a line there too.
When students refused to move for him, he, without hesitation, shot bright red lasers shot in an immediate burst from his otherworldly, eternal gaze. Multiple students were obliterated. All that was left in the students’ place was the solemn sight of a dining hall bowl puttering about the floor. A bowl which now needed to be washed, despite never having held any cereal at all. Sad.
Upon this scene, students began attempting to flee the dining hall in a crazed daze, but as each student neared the exit of the dining hall, they all began dropping like flies.
It then became apparent: the dean was not only abusing his new powers bestowed upon him by Charles, but employing old tactics of his time at the university.
Elmore the Eliminator had set up a paywall of 90,000 dollars to leave the dining hall, including a 600 dollar dining fee. Nobody was leaving that room, including myself. And the departed Dean was getting frustrated. But why was he here to begin with?
Then it hit me. He was after the Trix, just like everyone else.
“Hey! Elmore!” I shouted once more. “Go get your own cereal somewhere else! You don’t even work here anymore!”
This made Elmore angrier. He stormed to the front of the no longer existent line and grabbed the Trix machine. The students emitted an uproar of distressed cries.
I knew it was my time to shine. With as much gusto as I could muster, I ran over to the Trix, grabbed the cereal machine, and yanked back until we were in an ultimate game of tug of war. Before the former dean could blast me into oblivion with his laser eyes, I earnestly asked:
“Elmore—why are you doing this? Why not just move on?”
Something flashed in the apparently not-so-departed dean’s eyes. Was it fury?—No. It was sorrow. Under his heavy breathing, I could hear the former dean grumble:
“I would move on if I could, but you don’t understand”, Elmore winced, as if in pain, and his grip on the Trix began to loosen.
“Understand what, Elmore! Speak to me!” I dropped my end of the cereal container and cupped Elmore’s cheeks in my hands. I felt a tear slide into my palm.
“Trix…it’s…it’s for kids. You all are at least nineteen and I just—” Before he could even finish his sentence, we both heard a crunch sound from behind us. We both slowly turned to find a student curled up on the floor with a bowl of Trix in hand. He was eating it.
Elmore was nearly no more. He screamed in pain as the student continued to eat, only falling to the floor once the bowl was finished. The former dean began to shake.
Only then did I realize how truly dire Elmore’s situation was.
Despite the war in my heart, I knew the just and fair thing to do. Although it might’ve hurt my soul even more than the pain the dean was experiencing, to release Elmore from his BU Dining purgatory, it was what I must do:
With a lift and a toss the Trix cereal machine was gone. I threw it directly into the pizza oven and in only moments the cereal was converted into a Spinach and ricotta calzone.
No one else seemed to understand what had just happened. Except for one person.
The former dean continued to sob, although I’m certain this time they were happy tears. Elmore slowly got up off the ground and began to pad his way towards the dining room exit. The paywall barrier fell and all seemed at peace.
The next week, BU Dining Services announced they would be adding Rice Krispies cereal to replace the saddening loss of the Trix, and everyone was happy—until they weren’t.
Although former dean Elmore was no longer present to save these kids from making bad dietary decisions, I most certainly was, and I knew exactly what was going to happen as soon as some unexpecting student started to eat a bowl of Rice Krispies.
I staked out the cereal machines for weeks on end, but no one seemed as excited about the Krispies, at least in comparison to the Trix. One evening, I let down my guard; it was tater tot night.
And that’s when I heard it: “SNAP! CRACKLE! POP!” Kids—19 year old kids—began to combust everywhere.
I whipped around immediately and caught a split second of the carnage in my peripheral. Bowls of Rice Krispies laid scattered about the dining hall floor, surrounded by the smoke of what was once a COM kid, CAS student, or whatever other kind of students go to BU. The cereal laid there waiting for their next victim to make a move and suffer the same fate as their most unfortunate peers.
At that moment, I knew I couldn’t stop this travesty alone. I grabbed my plate of tater tots, got yelled at for stealing a dish from the dining hall, and booked it out of the dorm building.
I was on a mission, and my first stop was the Charles River.