By Crocodile Staff Writers Mary Grace and Jack
After The Alligator’s recent hard-hitting opinion exposé on Dance Marathon that displayed impressive fact-checking and zero bias toward the acclaimed organization that benefits the Children’s Miracle Network, we at The Crocodile decided to conduct our own investigation of an equally suspicious UF organization: Krishna lunch.
“Hare Krishna.” It has a nice ring to it.
From 11 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. whenever UF classes are in session, you can hear this chant float into the sky from the Plaza of the Americas. If you pass by on your way to Library West or Chipotle, you’ll see the smiling Krishna volunteers filling the plates of waiting students.
For $5 and all-you-can-eat Krishna lunch is the healthiest and most affordable food option on campus. We understand that feeding broke young adults is a wonderful cause, but we have a few questions. Where does your $5 donation actually go when you support Krishna lunch?
According to Krishna’s website, 48 percent of the money raised goes to the vegetables and lentils, 42 percent goes to rice and proteins, and 10 percent goes to almond dressing. Those percentages got our journalism senses tingling.
We decided to dig deeper, mostly because it’s trending right now for student new organizations named after reptiles to indirectly (and spinelessly) criticize universally acclaimed things. So we’re just gonna go ahead and make a hot take on Krishnas, because we’re bored and we want attention too.
To be clear, we didn’t tour the off-campus Krishna house where the food is prepared, research the prices of local ingredients, or calculate the average daily profit from Krishna lunch. We’re just throwing questions out in the name of ‘transparency’, snarkily suggesting that something fishy might be happening despite the vegetarian menu.
Is this article reflective of our personal bias against (and resentment towards) people who have fun socializing while providing a civic benefit to a financially vulnerable demographic? Probably. But that doesn’t mean we won’t write it and pretend there’s clout in it.
Besides, we know most Krishnas aren’t active on social media anyway, so there’s no way we’ll receive any backlash.
This piece was a collaboration by Crocodile Staff Writers Mary Grace and Jack.
