GrubHub food delivery robots appeared on the Notre Dame campus on Wednesday, February 8.

[Their introduction represents a change in the conditions of our common life that merits reflection].

While the choice to pay for an energy-consuming robot to deliver food rather than using the clean and healthy energy of the human body to walk across campus is a personal choice (though a [poor] one, we think), the presence of the robots on campus affects everyone, not just those who choose to purchase this service. There is no opting out of skirting the robots on the sidewalk or walking a gauntlet of these icons of [consumption] on the way into Duncan.

The robots are not merely functional []. They are a [] tech experiment capitalizing on a new asset: the public, communal space of campus.

This is what is new about the robots, and this is why their introduction [merits reflection] among the campus community: the robots represent a [regrettable] commercialization and privatization of our shared campus. We cannot [accept] the presence of the robots without accepting a transformation of what it means to be Here together.

The robots generated our knee-jerk [resistance] because they [cloud] the meaning of this campus’s space. Their bobbing orange flags say, “Life is consumption, and the destiny of mankind is an unchecked acceleration of consumption.” Their sleek white surfaces and fishy camera eyes add, “And there’s nothing you can do about it.”

Maybe there isn’t. But [it's worth thinking about what all this means]. Do you hate the robots? [Ground yourself in your convictions] by signing the petition. Let it not be said that when the robots came to turn our shared space into a commodity, we simply got in line.

[Note: As a gesture of goodwill, the foregoing has been amended into a slightly more modest proposal as of 2/22, with emendations indicated in brackets out of respect for previous signatories.]