Brunch is a staple for most students, with many enjoying breakfast sandwiches, biscuits, muffins, and hash-browns daily. One food stands out for me: the bagel.

The humble bagel is a simple, but delicious product that brings a smile of contentment to many faces. Because it lacks the salt, sugar, and other unhealthy substances, the bagel is comparatively healthier than the other breakfast options we have. The bagel is also less messy, more portable, and the culmination of thousands of years of baking perfection.

However, the school brunch service is discouraging the consumption of these delicious delights by not slicing them ahead of time. Rather, in an affront to common decency, they simply hand out cream cheese and a plastic knife and say “good luck.” With the inferior cutting implements we are given, the only choice the student body has is to forgo the spread and bite into the bagel, a comparatively miserable experience.

Instead of providing proper utensils, the dehumanizing alternative of flimsy, unusable knives serve only to heighten the frustrations of the student body. On top of homework, sports, activities and exams, the straw that breaks the camel’s back is the lack of adequately prepared bagels. A fantastic opportunity to improve the lives of all students is at stake.

Where man climbed out of the pits of ignorance and superstition with his cutlery, the brunch service has decided to push us back in.

The department of Food Services for the Acalanes Union High School District appears committed to a policy of ignoring the wants and needs of their students. We cry for the liberation that better utensils or a bagel slicer would bring, but such pleas have been ignored. By continuing the tyranny of the uncut bagels, the administration stands for despotism, autocracy, and anti-gluten ideals.

I urge all of you to fight for the right to eat bagels the way they were meant to be eaten; split in twine with cream cheese spread between them. Fight for a bagel toaster and slicer and save students from disappointing brunch experiences.