Welcome to The Phoenix’s weekly digest. Every week during the quarter, you can expect our writers’ takes on some campus happenings.

This week, David Wang discusses the merits of the Maroon Key Society.

To any rising third or fourth-years: getting tired of dining hall food? Is eating out getting expensive? Got a GPA over 3.5? Then you should join the most prestigious dining club on campus: the Maroon Key Society. Picture this: once a month, at 5:30 p.m., you and your fellow diners get to gather in Harper’s most luxurious conference room. The evening’s offerings, catered from local restaurants, are spread out buffet-style along the wall. After taking all the free food you can eat without looking slovenly, prepare for some high-brow dinner conversation. But you’d better eat quickly: the last thing you want is to show Melina Hale your awful table manners.

See, that’s the other thing: like any respectable dining club, MKS prides itself on its high-caliber guests. They usually invite some university power player to speak about campus issues. Apparently, MKS members got an inside look at PhoenixAI before the administration rolled it out last year. On Tuesday, Eric Heath, Associate VP for Safety and Security, dined with the Society. Mr. Heath ably addressed MKS members’ questions regarding student safety and was pleasantly down-to-earth. Alas, while the conversation was sparkling, my crab rangoon was cold. 

I imagine that some of our readers are confused. According to College Programming and Orientation, the Maroon Key Society (MKS) is “the College’s honorary society and its principal student advisory group.” This is also how they present MKS in their bi-yearly emails to solicit applications. From their stringent eligibility requirements (see: GPA cutoff) and civically minded application prompts, you might even believe them. But don’t be fooled: whatever it was meant to be, it is now a dining club. This has become obvious from the four meetings I’ve attended. MKS feeds hungry college students and does little else. 

And really, I’m beginning to suspect that it was always meant to be a dining club. Think about it. MKS has nearly forty members. Most SOSC classes have around twenty students, and they already seem to go in circles. So, how productive will the conversation be when you double the meeting size? No reasonable person would assemble such a group if they actually intended it to accomplish something. And when you consider that this clunky, bloated “advisory board” meets just once a month, only two possibilities remain: either MKS was designed to do nothing, or it was very, very poorly designed. As an optimist on the rationality of man, I am forced to accept the first conclusion.

At present, MKS lacks direction. For several months now, it has been deliberating on a year-end “legacy” project. Meetings lurch from one topic to another, regularly punctuated by futile calls to please decide what to do. Its members remain under the tragic misapprehension that they are expected to achieve something. I, on the other hand, have been freed from this illusion. I have been liberated by my recent realization that MKS was never meant to achieve anything in the first place. I can enjoy my monthly meal in peace.

On the off-chance that I am wrong and that MKS is meant to give admin constructive advice: if they are still looking for ways to save money, I can think of at least one program to cut.

David Wang, MKS Member
Unsolicited food critic, The Phoenix

Stay tuned for next week’s edition. In the meantime, if you have any thoughts, disagreements, or words of support, we want to hear them! Write to us at thechicagophoenix@gmail.com.