Life at NYU Law » International Food Festival

(Originally posted on March 8, 2012 at Life at NYU Law » International Food Festival)

The beginning of the spring semester has proven to be a surprisingly challenging period of 1L year. For one, the “fear-adrenaline” that was steadily pumping through my veins first semester has run dry. More or less knowing what to expect the second time around, I find it can be difficult to muster the desire to thoroughly read that 10-page dissenting opinion at 1:00 in the morning on a sleep-deprived weeknight. To make matters worse, six weeks of wining and dining at various law firms’ 1L receptions briefly tricked me into thinking I’d already been hired for some cushy job. Even the Belgium Waffles coffee shop around the corner that I single-handedly kept in business for much of last semester… is now out of business.

So what does one turn to during these trying times?

Extracurricular activities. Frequent list-serve updates are a welcome distraction on long library nights, and every now and then, amid the 1,436 solicitations for apartment sublets on Coase’s List, there’s an invitation to one of the various student groups’ eye-opening events. Or, in the case of last week’s International Food Festival, mouth-watering.

Last Thursday, NYU Law’s International Law Society, SBA, and Asia Law Society came together to sponsor the annual event, with support from IAA, Law Women, SALDF, PORTMANTEAU, LSHR, ALA, and MELSA. That’s some serious acronym firepower. Hundreds of students (and even some admitted students) congregated in Vanderbilt Hall’s Golding Lounge to sample delicacies from around the globe. All of the event’s proceeds were donated to the World Food Programme, the world’s largest humanitarian agency fighting hunger.

I sampled Nigerian coconut candy, Iranian ghormeh sabzi, and Ethiopian alicha and shiro. I gawked at no fewer than seven different varieties of French cheese. I noshed on a German vegetarian casserole curiously named Westphalian blind hen. And I avoided gluten like the plague.

Once I was nearly food-comatose, I returned to my apartment with newfound vigor to finish re-reading that 10-page dissenting opinion. Just kidding… I made that part up. That sounded like the proper ending though, right? But ultimately, even if events like the International Food Festival (and Saturday’s LaLSA Ball, while we’re at it) haven’t directly motivated me to do more work, they have certainly been welcome distractions along the way. Extremely delicious distractions.

United Airlines Inexplicably Stops Offering GF Meals

This puzzles me.  While the rest of the world is becoming more receptive and aware of celiac disease and the increasingly high demand for gluten-free products, United Airlines is apparently committed to returning to the ignorant days of the past.

GF Meals? Not on United.

On Friday, I'll be flying to Beijing for a week.  I had booked my flight about a month ago through Continental Airlines, fully aware that the airline was soon merging with United, but not concerned because I had flown with both before, and had never had a problem requesting gluten-free meals aboard either of their flights.  But today, when I called United Airlines to confirm my special meal, I was rebuffed.  After patiently waiting for roughly an hour and a half as an automated voice told me about how wonderful the airline is, I finally got through to a customer service agent who informed me that the newly merged airline has made a decision to stop offering gluten-free meals on ANY flights.  So Continental offered GF meals... United offered GF meals... but now with the merger, Continental + United = No GF meals?  Uhh... why?

It is clearly a decision to cut costs, with no consideration of customers whatsoever.  I'm generally not one to use this (or any other) platform to vent against a corporation, but this really pisses me off.  The best explanation that the customer service representative and his supervisor could offer me was that special meals need to be ordered in "bulk," and that in their minds, the demands of "one customer" didn't justify offering gluten-free meals on their flights in the future.  One customer?  Really?

Ultimately, I will bring my own food for my 14-hour flight this Friday, and I'm sure it will taste better than the sub-par GF meals that the airline would have offered me, anyway.  But that's not the point.  When a corporation makes an economic decision to exclude sufferers of a medical condition from the selected customers that it chooses to cater to, that company's name needs to be smeared.  And those excluded sufferers need to tell United Airlines about how they feel until the corporation changes its new anti-celiac policy.  I'll be the first one:  Dear United Airlines, I may be just "one customer", but I am not the only one who your boneheaded decision will drive away from any and all future business.  As a newly merged international corporation, you're doing a great job of showing your loyal customers just how you feel about them.  Thank you for not caring.