“Phelps’ new Hunger Games dining system”

Photo By Nico Kazlauskas

*Please note that this article is part of the Ranchor (the Anchor’s satirical edition)!

The dining configuration for Hope College has always been rocky. Cook’s unsteady dining hours and, most recently, its closure for the 2024-2025 school year have led to very hectic moments at Phelps, Hope’s most popular and now only dining hall on campus. Seating has become a race, scavenger hunts for utensils occur every evening, and evading lines has become a sleight of hand trick, as students find new ways to cut in front of lines stretching from Phelps to the President’s house. 

The good news for students, however, is that the friendly faces at Phelps want to help! New information about next year’s dining situation has been unveiled, and the latest plans have caused some slight confusion among readers. To address this, we will break down the updated 2024-2025 “Dining Experience,” as the dining staff calls it.

Phelps has acknowledged the demand for forks during dining hours. To accommodate this, as every student enters Phelps, they will be encouraged to “race” to the center of the hall’s newly built Cornucopia, where items such as plates, forks, napkins, trays and other “implements of combat” can be found and sought after. Phelps encourages students to “get creative” with obtaining not only their utensils but also their meals as more dining options are available for creative meal constructions. Alternative dining options, such as the new Crust and Craft Corner, Street Food Bar, All-Day Breakfast, and Poison Pantry are now available for all of Hope’s “aggressive diners”! 

Seating in Phelps this past year has been scarce. Thankfully, an “Equal Seating” agreement will be implemented. What does this mean? According to Hope’s Head of Dining, all seats and tables are to be removed! Phelps is working on expanding this new “Terrain-Style Dining” into the Maas Center to include more expansive decor such as indoor cliffs, deserts, jungles and even lakes, thanks to the help of Lake Michigan water! Students are to expect terrain variations as Phelps Workers can digitally manipulate the new hall’s layout and simulate their own natural events for an immersive and unique experience every time you enter! 

Tired of waiting in long lines only to discover the last grilled cheese has been taken and having to wait five minutes for an employee to restock? Well, we have good news! As lines in Phelps will no longer exist, these troubles are no more! All dining sections, such as the Comfort Corner, The Zone, Salad Bar, and more will expand to allow students to search and scavenge for meals. Phelps believes that no student should be held above another and that everyone deserves an equal chance to obtain their meals. Phelps plans to make this scavenger-styled dining even more immersive with brand new obstacles, such as new “caution wet signs,” hidden mines, cleaning carts, force fields, snares, students walking while looking at their phones, or even explosive devices designed to create a more atmospheric experience for all students wanting to enjoy their dining plan to the fullest extent.

Finally, on the topic of dining plans, a new system will be implemented replacing the current options of four dining plans. This new system will divide the campus into twelve plans or, as Dining Services has called them, “districts”, based on students’ majors and extracurricular activities. The new dining options are as follows: District 1: Luxury goods, District 2: Business Majors, District 3: Technology, District 4: Fishing, District 5: Female Studies, District 6: Transportation and medicine, District 7: Philosophy, District 8: Textile, District 9: Grain, District 10: Kinesiology, District 11: Agriculture, and District 12: Studio Art Majors.

The new dining experience will be fully implemented, and renovations will be made in the next school year to accommodate Cook’s closure. As we bid farewell to the chaos of past dining experiences and embrace the brave new world of Phelps Dining Hall, let us raise our forks (scavenged from the Cornucopia, of course) to a future filled with adventure, innovation and perhaps just a hint of explosive excitement. After all, where else would you find indoor cliffs and hidden mines alongside your pub cheese dip and pretzel bites? Not at Calvin University, that’s for sure! Bon appétit, dear students, and may the odds be ever in your flavor!