By Abby Knox, Staff Writer

It was a Saturday afternoon. I walked into Hoff Dining Commons and headed to make my go-to yogurt bowl. Normally that looks like yogurt, granola and peanut butter. I got a healthy serving of yogurt and a large helping of granola. When I went to put the final touch of peanut butter on top, I was met with a horrific sight: globs of jelly in the peanut butter. Needless to say, I did not get the glorious yogurt bowl I was expecting.

At first, I was confused as to why or how this happened, but then I noticed the larger volume of people in the Caf, none of whom I had seen before. The amount of guests that was at Xavier was not small. The guests were everywhere, sitting together in groups with matching t-shirts. I’d say there were over 100, which may not seem like many, but when it comes to our rather small singular dining hall on campus, this was quite an overwhelming number of people on top of the usual amount of students present at any given time.

  Even after leaving the Caf, no one really knew what was going on. Through rumors, it was figured out that this influx of guests was in fact because of a robotics tournament being held that weekend in Cintas Center. Following the day of robotic matches, the students as well as the coaches headed to the dining hall. This is why I believe the jelly was in the peanut butter.

Maybe this seems silly to some, but the issue is not the jelly in the peanut butter. It is the fact that the tournament was not announced in an efficient, timely manner.  Yes, there was an Instagram story posted by the Xavier dining account the day before the tournament, but is that enough? In my opinion, no. A lot of the student body does not follow Xavier’s Instagram, much less the dining account. Even if they did, they might not be on Instagram all the time. A more widespread form of communication would have been through email. 

Not knowing about the robotics tournament did not just affect the use of the buildings on campus, but the lack of timely information being shared with the Xavier community led to a lot of congestion in the parking lots. The guests needed a place to park, and so did the students. 

Do not get me wrong, it is good that Xavier hosts events like the robotics tournament or the cheer competition that happened later that same weekend. These events are a great way to get more students on campus, even if they are not looking for a college just yet. 

With that being said, it is important that students are well-informed, not only because the students deserve to know what is going on at their university, but more importantly because it is a safety issue. For example, if I were to see someone looking out of place, I may be more inclined to call XUPD when in reality that person is just here to see an event being hosted at Xavier University.

A simple email is all that would need to be done in order to inform the Xavier community. “PSA there will be lots of people on campus today due to…” would do the trick.