Amid Valentine’s Day Scandal, “Cock-blocking” College Changes Lunch Voucher Program

On Feb. 14th, the College received multiple complaints from staff at Pine on Valentine’s Day regarding the ‘take your professor to lunch’ program. Currently, the program’s voucher covers lunch for up to three students and one professor at the fine dining establishment.

According to Pine staff, students have exploited loopholes in the program to go on Valentine’s Day dates, leading the college to release a statement prohibiting the use of Pine vouchers to go on dates. Disgruntled students are calling the College a “cock-block” that “killed my game.”

“I’m not really good at talking to girls in general,” said Jeff Stanley ’24. “So as soon as I found out about the lunch program, I thought it’d be the perfect excuse to ask out this cute girl in my class.”

To use the lunch voucher, Stanley invited Professor Dawn of the computer science department on the attempted date. “It was definitely a strange experience,” said the professor. “It’s been years since I’ve been a third wheel.”

Professor Dawn tried asking Ling what brought her to the College, but Stanley suggested holding off on conversation and instead “staring intently into each other’s eyes.” 

“When Jeff asked to get lunch with me and Professor Dawn, I didn’t think much of it, but then things started to get pretty weird,” said the aforementioned cute girl Megan Ling ’24.“As soon as we sat down, Jeff started pulling candles and candleholders out of his pockets. He said he called ahead and Pine had refused to provide candle lighting for a lunch event…?” Ling continued. Staff at the Pine confirmed Stanley’s call and said he was one of many requests for candle-lighting that day. 

“Candle-lighting wasn’t my only request,” said Stanley. “I also tried reserving seating for two and an additional table for one. Pine said they were booked solid and that the voucher ‘didn’t work that way,’ but there’s no rule specifically stating you can’t reserve separate tables.” Stanley explained that he was willing to go to any length to have a special time with Ling, except asking her out on a real date, of course. 

To make matters worse, Pine staff reported that multiple students attempted to order wine and pay with the voucher although the fine print clearly states that alcoholic beverages are not included. 

“Yeah, I did try ordering a bottle of their finest wine, but the waiter said I’d have to pay out of pocket for that, so I quickly canceled the order,” said Stanley. “I’d definitely defraud Dartmouth College for Megan, but I won’t pay extra for sauvignon blanc.” 

When asked how she thought the date went, Ling replied “is that what that was?” 

—AR ’25