I recently went to a Beacon Tailgate event at a hockey game on campus. The ad for the event advertised free burgers and hot dogs, but when I got there I found that the ladies in charge of giving out food, all of them student athletes, were only giving out one item per customer. They were strict to the point of marking students’ hands with a sharpie so that they would not serve the same student twice. The one exception to this policy, I noticed, was other athletes. Any baseball or basketball player who walked up to the counter had food thrown at him, as much as he wanted. Players didn’t have to wait in line, they didn’t get their hands marked, and they took multiple hot dogs and burgers at the same, some of them multiple times over the course of the night.

I’m sorry, but just because you get recruited to play a sport at a university doesn’t entitle you to more food or any other special privileges. Athletes need to start realizing that they are here to represent the university, not have their own little clique and act like other students here are second-class citizens. Start reaching out to the student body and try to make some non-athletic friends. We might not go to the gym as much as you, but we are definitely just as valuable to UMass Boston as you. You don’t deserve more food than a non-athlete. Maybe being better at a sport (or dare I say more attractive than the general population) has made you the right friends, and as a result made you believe that you do deserve special privileges. You don’t, and you need to come down to earth a little bit.