Chicken Little Café, a restaurant for midgets located underneath Vegan Café on the top floor of Davenport Campus Center, celebrated its grand opening yesterday.
“There are no small events,” said Midget Bennet ’07 at the grand opening ceremony. “Only small people.”
The concept of a midget café has been discussed on campus for the better part of a decade, and it is finally a reality. Chicken Little will be open for lunch and dinner seven days each week, from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. and 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. The food options will be similar to other Campus Center Options, except the portions will be smaller, as will the dishes, silverware, and furniture. The urinals in the bathroom of the café will also be closer to the ground.
“We’re living large,” said Bridget Small ’10, a midget. “We’ve been marginalized for years, and we have our own dining location at last.”
There is enough dining space for 25 midgets at Chicken Little, which also features a midget chef.
“Midgets are now the second most popular thing on campus to begin with the letters M-I-D-G-E,” said Director of Pubic Relations Joe Luzer. “This is a very big deal for a very large number of very small people.”
However, not everyone is thrilled about the new dining location.
“As a person of normal size, I feel marginalized,” said Manute Bol P’11. “People over five feet will have a lot of trouble fitting in Chicken Little should they choose to eat there.”
Other members of the University community are concerned about the financial aspects of a new dining location.
“This is not the best way to downsize the budget,” said Vice President for Finance and Administration John Jacob Jingleheimer-Schmidt. “And this really only benefits a small number of small people. Why can’t midgets just eat at Mocon?”
Dean of the College Maria Booze-Crotcho informed the University community of the new dining location in a campus-wide e-mail on Sunday.
“Hopefully the opening of Chicken Little will increase dialogue on acts of intolerance against midgets,” she said in the e-mail, citing an incident in which a football player punted a midget over 20 yards earlier in the year. “The money that would have been used for the New York Times Readership Program went toward this café instead.”
Several student activists have worked with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) to open Chicken Little, and they say that this is only part of a greater mission to further diversify future presidential candidates of universities across the country.
“Does one of those exist?” asked University President Doug Bennet. “And more importantly, would she really be qualified to be the president of a university outside of Texas?”
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