This past Sunday, Alumni Hall opened its iconic restaurant Dawg Pizza for the first time this academic year.
They are known for serving Michelin star pizza bagels, a culinary craft worthy of a million laurels and high praises! The rollout was stunted, however, by an ongoing revolution caused by higher prices.
Dawg Pizza manager and Alumni Hall senior Thaddeus Lipinski announced the service’s new partnership with a student startup called CARI. This is an online card processing company. Dawg Pizza allegedly instituted the partnership in an effort to make the online ordering process easier and keep track of orders and sales which were being lost in the previous manual ordering structure.
CARI uses Stripe to process online transactions, a software which allegedly simplifies online financial payments for businesses. Stripe takes a transaction fee of 2.9 percent plus 30 cents per domestic charge. This means that orders for Dawg Pizza have skyrocketed in price, as Alumni Dawgs are forced to pay an additional forty-seven whole cents per order of Dawg Pizza to cover carrying costs for the app.
At approximately 11 p.m. Sunday night, former Alumni Hall president James Baird led a march through the hall carrying a “Don’t Tread on Me” flag. Baird was followed by current co-president Guy Maiorano, who sported a cardboard sign which stated “f*** the co-presidents.” Not sure why he was revolting against himself here, to be honest, but we’ll move on.
The revolution has also led to mass abuse of the DawgMail email chain in Alumni Hall. Two RA’s chipped in Sunday night, urging students to “vote with your wallets” and not to “give in to Big Pizza.”
Sophomore Anthony Lucatuorto, “The Dorm Philosopher,” sent a 459-word essay in response to and in support of Baird’s post-march email. His thesis was that the app partnership of Dawg Pizza “violates the moral codes of Aristotelian Virtue Ethics, Kantian Deontology, and Utilitarianism.”
Seriously, do these kids have nothing better to do with their time this midterm season?
Anyway, in a Wednesday email asserting that “we are not crooks,” Lipinski defended Dawg Pizza’s transition to CARI and explained the fee. He argued that CARI helped Dawg Pizza track sales, retain their revenue and operate at a profit, writing that if they were to “work under the framework of last year’s Dawg Pizza, there would not be Dawg Pizza.”
Quickly, Alumni divided between support for the Hall Administration and Hall Revolution.
While RA Jordan Pavlock responded to the email chain in support of Lipinski, Baird replied quickly: “Fake news + L + ratio. Checkmate. El Prez wins again.”
Several attempts to overthrow Alumni Hall’s current leadership have already been executed. Rebels fired mists of vinegar through spray bottles. Some residents have called this travesty “the greatest threat to democracy since the downfall of Zahm.” Hundreds of students were wounded. We’re still confirming whether it was blood or pizza sauce on the walls of Alumni Sunday night.
Baird and several assailants have launched a campaign against what they perceive to be a “satanic tax,” threatening wide-scale revolution if their requests are not met. Signs condemning these unjust taxes have been thrown up all across the sections of the hall. Several posters and online graphics have phrased a slogan reading, “47 cents Makes No Sense.” Many emails sent through the Alumni thread have insinuated that a call to arms is necessary to break the chains of oppression. Memes are abundant.
A “Save Democracy” survey was administered to the student body of Alumni on Monday, asking residents who they would support to lead the dorm as President. The current co-presidents, Maiorano and junior James Walsh, received less than 5% of the vote, only beating out the “Joe Biden” option.
In second place, junior Ryan “KILLA” Murray received 32%, while “#BringBackBaird” received 61%. But due to the fact that the first 30 votes were all in favor of Baird, we cannot confirm the integrity of this election.
Baird’s popularity likely stems from his administration's unprecedented success in keeping prices low during periods of high economic inflation. The annual inflation rate in the United States during Baird’s presidency was 3.4%, the second highest annual rate in the past 40 years. Despite this nearly insurmountable pressure to raise prices, Baird resisted price hikes and kept the Dawg Pizza Bagel at 4 dollars flat. Meanwhile, the average inflation rate today is 2.5%. Many Alumni Dawgs are struggling to understand such hikes in Dawg Pizza prices despite evidence of lower inflation and cheaper prices in other areas of the economy. Many Alumni Dawgs, in other words, suspect that corruption and manipulative business practices are being enforced.
This is an ongoing revolution, and an ongoing non-news story. A protest aligning with the time of this story’s deadline was underwhelming, but loud enough to probably annoy some of the dorm’s more studious dawgs and impassioned enough to provide some nice photos for the online article.
Anyway, The Observer has better things to do than continue reporting on it.
To issue a complaint, please contact jrudolp3@nd.edu.
