By CLAIRE WINTER

If you are enrolled on the Beloit meal plan as I am, for whatever asinine reason (personally, I have an uncontrollable psychosexual tension with the terrible Commons rehydrated scrambled eggs), YOU have: “Flex Dollars”. Or “Turtle Bucks”. Or “Fun New Rebranding Campaign Beloit’s Doing To Distract From The Fact It’s Destroying A Hundred Years of Liberal Arts for Prospective 2.0-GPA Business Students, Please Invest!”. Whatever they’re called nowadays. 

Point is, you’ve got ‘em and you’ve got too fuckin’ many of them. I don’t care how many times you’re eating at Commons per week. I don’t care what meal plan Randi Mogul sent you fifty million emails about signing up for. You, more likely than not, have at least a hundred Beloit-branded Monopoly Dollars to be used exclusively on food.

The thing is, there’s a limited amount of places you can use said “Flex Dollars”. One of these places is DK’s, where you can, instead of thinking about how those sodas are 7$ each, use not-real money instead! You’re still paying for it, but in advance, so you can go into debt before every semester starts! 

However, because DK’s has less line organization than our current administration and gives me anxiety hives to boot, I’ve been forced to look into alternatives. 

Fun fact! There aren’t any. Every other vending machine set on campus uses real money to salvage the sinking ship of the college’s finances even though tuition is sixty grand or more, with one exception: the Powerhouse vending machines. 

Located in a quiet room made of whitewashed concrete and despair, with their own plaque christening it “BEL-MART”, a line of five or so machines grant access to a variety of snacks via the easy method of inserting a student ID instead of your daddy’s credit card. 

Last semester, I had a 7-to-9pm class and no will left to live in order to drag myself into Commons before 6pm, on a good day. At the end of every night, walking back from Godfrey, I would detour to the Powerhouse, spend two minutes max picking out some passable snacks, and walk back with my loot to cry alone in my room, safe in the knowledge that I was at least getting some money’s worth out of my meal plan. Despite all my bitching about the Powerhouse, this is genuinely a lifesaver. 

Or, should I say, was. Was a lifesaver. 

Sometime between our last day of September and the day I’m writing this article, the college unceremoniously removed the Powerhouse’s vending machines without so much as a students@beloit.edu email. Straight up just…walked them out the back door. Nothing beside 

remains, round the decay of that colossal wreck of a first floor side room.  

What the fuck.

I know Beloit College admin loves to pull the rug out from under us, but- seriously? Not even a cursory “hey, are you using this?” My sixteen-year-old brother would have had more courtesy, and THAT guy keeps taking my good spoons without telling me.

I have no idea why Powerhouse management has done this. I have no god to demand answers from, and at the rate I’ve observed, it’ll take a full four weeks to even get an email response. All I know is that my options for snacks have become limited to either tolerating DK’s overpriced cinnamon rolls, or forking over that sweet, sweet cash to Beloit College, so they can keep removing things that make our lives just a little bit better. Thanks. Very helpful. 

Featured image: Vecteezy