Spotlight
Summer 2009 Back to Spotlight home page
A Memorial to My Union
Editor's note
Food, an abundance of food.
This remains my central memory of ESU’s Memorial Union.
As a freshman in the cafeteria, there were waffles and syrup, breakfast cereal, ice cream – and then dessert, too. We’d arrive for dinner at 4:30 just so we could eat a second dinner around 6:00. The “freshman 15” never materialized on my still-growing frame.
As an upperclassman, I had the good fortune to work in the Union as an operations manager, one of four or five students who rotated the responsibility of managing the building in the evenings and over weekends. When a fancy event was over, a whiff of leftovers would send my nose upstairs to retrieve a plate of steak, mashed potatoes and green beans from a warming oven. I’d make my rounds of the conference rooms after meetings, locking doors, turning off lights, and properly disposing of any cookies containing macadamia nuts and white chocolate chips.
While my metabolism has gradually slowed, my sense of nostalgia has gone in the opposite direction. The Memorial Union is at the heart of campus, alternately offering the sustenance of a kitchen, the comfort of a living room, the socializing of a foyer, and the entertainment of a basement den. The building is all of these things, as it has been for generations and generations of ESU, EKSC and KSTC students.
Today, I am practically giddy – my mouth is watering, you might say – at the prospect of walking through the Union in a few years, after every corner of it is renovated and polished to perfection.
But I can’t wait on an empty stomach. It’s almost lunch time, and the food shop by the bookstore has these amazing burritos….
- By Jesse Tuel (BSB 2001, MA 2008)