Recently, an Observer editorial likened Notre Dame's gay and lesbian community to Nazis. While I would like to comment on this, I will instead ask for meat on Fridays in the dining hall. I mean, how is one to correctly observe the Lenten sacrifice when it is forced on the vast majority of Notre Dame students who do not have the $2.99 in liquid assets for a Whopper value meal?

The meatless policy in the dining hall only makes sense if one is aware of the sacrifice they are making. I am not aware, so please give my chicken fried steak.

I wonder how many of us are eating those cheese sandwiches because we have to or because we are making a free and beautiful choice to abstain from meat on Fridays because the Pope says we have to.

Otherwise, you'll just feel the guilt you enjoyed in grade school, when Sister Mary Katherine used to paddle me in the corner every week for eating a Super Star from Carl's Jr. Although I relive these feelings every week when I reenact the scene with my boyfriend Bobby, it isn't appropriate. Uh, what was I talking about here? I got a little mixed up. Sorry. I'll start again.

College is supposed to help us make choices. Instead, it is making us insane for the smell of liver.

I think Notre Dame should help us make choices in other ways. Like free love on the quad. How can we truly accept the Catholic Church's sex policy when it is forced upon us by Patty O? And how is Notre Dame encouraging honesty by keeping the doors locked at night? We are not making the free choice not to steal when this free choice is being perverted into a superplusunfree choice? [You would know what that meant if you read "1984" for Core last night ;-) ]

How about this? A $1 million check payable by the tobacco industry to me, Feathers Galore. If I don't cash it, I have made a free choice. If I do, then I have rescued 3000 children from a tar-laden doom. You win both ways.

Today, when you are abstaining from meat, ask yourself why. Is it tradition? Guilt? Or a free choice to observe a tradition based on guilt?

Isn't it ironic? Don't you think?