The “Free Food WashU” chat currently has 3,008 members and operates as a sort of civilian reporting system where WashU students can write in orders they aren’t going to pick up or leftovers from events for other students to grab. It was originally created to reduce food waste on campus but has since transformed into a service for hungry students. While the chat is part of WashU undergrad culture, we wanted to test its practicality and determine if someone could feasibly eat based on the GroupMe offerings for an entire day. 

The GroupMe for the class of 2023, once benign, has now turned into a source of entertainment for many, featuring frequent arguments, personal drama and sometimes blatant racism.

In a time where we have all been asked to balance safety and socializing, perhaps no one has felt the strain of this task more than the University’s freshmen.

Asian and Pacific Islanders Demanding Justice (APIDJ) hosted the event to address racially insensitive messages sent in the Umrath first floor GroupMe Sept. 30. It was designed to create a safe space for Asian and Pacific Islanders and other students to discuss the incident and to share their experiences as minority students on campus.

Offensive ideas are not new to campus. Communities of color deal with problematic comments and behaviors constantly. Why does it take one of those comments going viral on campus to get a response?

The staff of the Center for Diversity and Inclusion and Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs Lori White responded to the Umrath Hall floor GroupMe controversy in separate statements emailed to the student body Oct. 3 and 4, respectively.

A series of insensitive messages in the Umrath Hall first floor GroupMe prompted backlash on social media and led to apologies from the messages’ authors this week.

While a thousand students in one room is seen as a mob, a thousand students in one group chat is seen as a bonding opportunity.

A few notes: My roommate and I had chosen random. Neither of us were active on social media. We had texted one another only twice: once for brief introductions and once to coordinate dorm shopping.