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New York Times covers Columbia University's terrible Nutella crisis of 2013

Last month, a dining hall at Columbia University began serving Nutella every day.

The New York Times has published a piece pulling back the curtain on a Nutella crisis plaguing Columbia University. Here's the gist:

Once upon a time, the students of Columbia University had to either wait for the weekend to get Nutella at the dining hall or buy the stuff on their own. The Columbia College Student Council petitioned Dining Services to serve Nutella every day because, college. As soon as the university made stuff available every day, students started swiping it because, again, college.

Now, Columbia's campus is just like this, except with Nutella instead of gasoline.

In all seriousness, though, the Nutella problem is an actual issue at Columbia. A freshman member of the Columbia College Student Council says that the executive director of Dining Services told him the theft created a problem to the tune of 100 pounds a day and $5,000 in the first week of the Nutella policy change. But, according to AN ACTUAL PIECE IN THE NEW YORK TIMES, a university spokeswoman called shenanigans on those figures.

Before hanging up on a reporter who called on Wednesday, Ms. Dunn said: "I'm not allowed to comment on anything. You have to go through university communications."

A spokeswoman declined to comment on the Nutella situation at Columbia. She said that numbers quoted in The Columbia Daily Spectator — and repeated by Mr. Bailinson in a telephone interview on Wednesday — were "speculative and inaccurate" and that the cost figures were "roughly 10 times greater than the actual figures."

Either way, the issue was important enough for Dining Services to enlist the help of the Student Council to help solve it. This is why we can't have nice things. [The New York Times]