Perhaps you’ve noticed, if you're a student or resident of larger Boulder, a sense of malaise that hangs in the air every Thursday, starting just before noon. It’s not just you -- the vibe is just a little off. Thanks to a decision made by CU Dining Services, one of the most important groups in the city’s ecosystem has been disturbed: the skaters. This semester, The Alley at Farrand hall discontinued hot, delicious dumplings on Thursdays, which has simply put the skating population in a funk. Our field reporter Rhys Rueffert spoke to some of these troubled individuals:

SKATER #1: It’s just been tough, man. I get up and put on my long-sleeve Primitive Skate x Kikkoman shirt and shred for a few hours and go to get my Thursday Dumpies and they’re just gone. It’s a total downer.

SKATER #2: My favorite part of the week used to be fuckin’ tearin it up in the parking lot by Farrand Field and then skating with my bros to The Alley to pick up some hot and steamy dumplings. I would eat those juicy dumplings in the warm, late-morning sun at the tables outside with my boys. We would watch people walk by and wonder what their past and futures contained, what priceless treasures lay in their hearts, waiting to be found. Those hot August afternoons were spent laughing and skating, getting bruised and scraped. We’d walk back to our dorm in Williams Village as the sun sank under the mountains behind us, our soft shadows and unspoken feelings just beginning to peek out, a sense of infinite contentment floating in the warm air. Later, I would spend the night with one of those same boys. Those days are over.

SKATER #3: It just feels harder to skate without those dumplings, kinda kills the vibe a little bit.

While no one would want to deprive skaters of joy, even larger consequences are at stake. Chad Gobb, a professor in Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, recently conducted a study on how these skaters might actually affect the city as a whole. Gobb performed vibe checks at several different locations at set times throughout the day and compared their results day-by-day, with startling results. The vibe was consistently measured to be less chill on Thursdays, with the first measured dip being around 11 A.M. This evidence strongly suggests a link between skater satisfaction on campus and the vibe around Boulder, Colorado.

Closer investigation into a selection of skaters who frequent the parking lot by Farrand Field yielded astonishing results -- the skaters are fixing carbon dioxide and converting it into energy, specifically in the form of positive vibes. Scientists from CU claim this discovery has significant implications both for renewable energy and vibe science; the skaters may be the main source of the generally chill vibe in Boulder, and they might also be fighting global warming in the process.

This calls into question the decision by CU Dining Services and the Alley to discontinue dumplings on Thursdays -- with the ever rising concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, sources of carbon fixation are a hot commodity.

Feeding the skaters would work towards combating climate change, and several protests by climate change activism groups are already being scheduled at CU for this very reason. Perhaps more importantly, though, is that it would fix the sour vibrations floatin’ around early on Thursday -- and that’s exactly what our city could use. Maybe CU dining services should give this one another look.