Reading the editorial “Give me my chicken, you cowards” plunged me into such a state of class anxiety that I blacked out completely to the opening bars of “The Internationale”. When I finally came to, however, I realized what a clever piece of work it actually was.

That editorial wasn’t joking about food on campus and, in the process, casually maligning the people who prepare it. Oh no. It was a devious piece of social commentary about how blinded we are, as students, to how irritating we can be to the front-line staff who keep this place running.

I had clues about how bad it was. When I walked into Café Bergson and saw the sign, “Only insert bagels and sliced bread into the toaster,” I thought, “Surely we’ve mastered this by now.” But lo! Not a week later I overheard one staff member telling another, “Did you see the smoke earlier? I found a whole burrito in that thing.”

And placing that editorial, the one that mocks members of the St. Louis community who make less than $15 an hour (until 2021! It’s so close I can taste it!), under a staff editorial encouraging the University to “uplift and support the goals of the greater local community”? Sheer genius. Five-star irony.

I was going to come here and write a very serious response on how we should use our platforms responsibly, blah blah blah, but then I realized: Wow, I totally missed it. The author wasn’t ACTUALLY writing from such a place of privilege that they would identify specific positions where people in the food service industry were supposedly underperforming. No, they were writing a PARODY of that perspective. Glad we caught that one, right?

Ultimately, I’m excited to analyze the next installment of “It Looks Like I’m Punching Down but I’m Not!” It is only by committing ourselves to this constant, contextualized, deeply witty work that we will truly prepare campus for an enrollment of up to 13% Pell-eligible students by 2020 (Whoa, is it just me, or does that seem like a LOT?!).