THE FOOD DESERT THAT ACCOMPANIES J. B. PRITZKER'S TAXATION AND CORONA TYRANNY.

I could recommend this Northern Star column as an illustration of Clueless Collegian Privilege.

DeKalb needs more diverse food options.

Lincoln Highway is lined with restaurants and fast food joints. McDonald’s, Pizza Hut and Culver’s can still be tempting and The Junction is a DeKalb favorite when it comes to comfort food, but it’s not satisfying or particularly exciting.

As a hungry college student, I want more options. I don’t always want to eat unhealthy fast food or quick-to-make comfort foods.

To be fair, DeKalb does have some options: in just the five miles surrounding NIU’s campus, there is a multitude of Chinese takeout places and different Mexican restaurants. Downtown DeKalb also offers a Thai restaurant, which is a personal favorite of mine.

What’s missing is variety.

Yes, Lincoln Highway is lined with restaurants, but options are still fairly limited when it comes to ordering. Chicken nuggets, burgers or pizza top the menu in most restaurants close to campus, with the exception of only a few.

Might it be that the places that are still in business had offerings that catered to people other than collegians. Between several years of declining enrollments, and two years of remote college, the correlation of forces has not favored eateries.

Many of the Chinese restaurants in DeKalb and Sycamore are typical takeout places — you won’t find anywhere that offers a more varied menu, like Chinese hotpot or dim sum.

The Mexican restaurants in DeKalb have the same pitfalls. Many of them offer similar dishes, and while they’re delicious, they don’t exactly offer anything special.

Obviously, there has to be a viable market for new restaurants. If there’s not, they won’t make money.

But what’s a more viable market than a university campus? College students are perpetually hungry and usually open to trying new things, especially when it comes to food.

That last sentence steps on the narrative of cash-poor collegians who ought have their student loans forgiven, doesn't it?  But the kind of places that might have offered variety are gone: the pho restaurant by the grocery store, the Panda, Wing Stop, and a local pizza delivery service in a complex that only hosts a Starbucks, and some of the more conventional hot dog and Italian beef outlets have given up.

But even before the current governor started issuing ukases and killing seniors, his tax and corruption agenda was driving productive people out.