The new Convenience Store is a menace that must be stopped. In the past two weeks, hundreds of students have been bled dry of Campus Dirhams, leaving them desperate for their biweekly top-up. With many students already living upload to upload, the remodel and expanded inventory threatens to drive them even further into poverty and to take advantage of their reckless indulgence in needless luxuries.

Since time immemorial, the NYU Abu Dhabi Convenience Store has faithfully provided students with all the necessities of university life. From candles that stayed lit longer than the birthday parties they celebrated, to the staple university diet of ramen noodles and Strepsil lozenges, it has only ever carried the bare essentials. Students learned to effectively budget their campus dirhams so they would only run out four or five days before upload.

Two weeks ago, however, the completion of the long-awaited renovation disrupted this long-established equilibrium. Students went into a frenzy. On the day of the grand opening, hordes of students armed with university ID cards stormed through the welcoming balloon archway into their financial doom.

Enraptured by the gargantuan selection of produce, baking supplies and stationery, GlobalLeaders™ of all classes carried out as much as their exhausted arms could carry.

“They had fresh mangos!” exclaimed Sophomore Didjano Imvegan. “I was making my pilgrimage to Lulus once a week to get those. I just had to buy them. What else was I supposed to do?!”

Indeed, the new selection led many students to make enthusiastic, if misguided, purchases. Junior Mints Arda Best spent over 300 dining dirhams on new candy and ice-cream options alone.

“There’s shelf after shelf and I can’t help myself. I stocked up for the next month. Unfortunately, I didn’t realize the one liter ice cream tubs don’t fit in our dorm freezers, so I had to just eat it all that afternoon before it melted. It was a struggle, but after getting back my midterm, hedonistic nihilism took over and it was gone before I knew what happened.”

Beyond coping mechanisms, the new Convenience Store has several more negative consequences. In the terrifying case of British student George Lawrence Tudor-Becket III, he got lost inside for over four hours. “There are almost as many aisles as my homeland. I just couldn’t seem to find my way out. Even worse, after all those hours of staring at the shelves, I still don’t know where anything is!”

The greatest menace, however, is the destitution wrought upon our dining dirham balances. When students without toasters are tempted with toastable waffles, how else could it end? Delaying the grand opening until just after dirhams were uploaded, the Convenience Store lulled us into a false sense of financial security before exploiting our weak sense of restraint.

Running out of free, fake money before the end of the first week, students have begun desperately begging friends for caffeine fixes and have become increasingly irritable in their poverty. The sense of hopelessness on campus is palpable. While the Political Science Department has used the fierce competition and intractable despair of the situation to better explain Hobbes’ “State of Nature,” these professors seem to be the only beneficiaries, other than the Convenience Store’s bottom line, of course.

Unfortunately, the struggle has only just begun. We must all work to budget our 346 new campus dirhams with the utmost vigilance and not fall victim to our own temptations. While the Class of 2023 will surely complain when the Convenience Store runs out of avocados for half a day, we bear the burden of remembering the age of scarcity. Let us enjoy our spoils responsibly.