Sunday night, 8 p.m. The student body shuffles into D2, awaiting another week of workaholism, surprise quizzes and insomnia. But, most importantly, their meal swipes and flex dirhams are about to expire. “Living on a zero-waste campus, that also applies to the 0.5 flex and 22 Campus Dirhams I have left for this week,” said Getmi Stipensworth, Class of 2023. As Stipensworth attempted to order three ribeye steaks, eleven different kinds of juice, two overpriced Caesar salads and the entire deli counter using five different kinds of currencies, three on-campus and two real, he was not backing down from milking every last drop he could.

“You don’t have enough in your account,” the dining hall cashier said as Stipensworth then attempted to pay with a long-expired credit card, a 1000 Hungarian Forint note and finally a coupon for 10 dirhams off KFC on Deliveroo. None of these worked, to his shock and horror. In defeat, Stipensworth went and returned the Caesar salad and the strawberry pomegranate juice back to their rightful positions on the grab-and-go shelf. At least he tried, and his balance was depleted. Upon returning to his room, he jammed all of his new purchases into the fridge where over the next week he would proceed to eat, at max, half of them. The leftovers may someday make their way to the long tables at the Baraha or the Hungry at NYUAD group on Facebook, if Stipensworth is feeling excessively philanthropic.

The 20 students waiting behind him and watching him struggle in vain to obtain food were not amused. “Why can’t people just, like, order what they’re gonna eat and not waste food?” asked Nai Eve, Class of 2025. But when Eve was three dirhams short of filling one meal swipe, he was “encouraged” to add a large plastic water bottle to his order, and thus himself add more non-biodegradable waste to the environment. Growing impatient and wanting to get their money’s worth, the students in line collectively bought out the grab-and-go shelf, depleting it of its granola cups and plastic bottles.

On seeing how much greener the campus balance sheet, but not the plastic waste dump, gets between 6:00 p.m. and 9:00 p.m. every Sunday night, Professor of Economics Ayn Flition found a new research topic. Perhaps he discovered the true secret to actually help economies recover from the pandemic and pay off national debts. If a solution to crises existed somewhere, it had to come from NYU Abu Dhabi. After all, how many other pioneering U.S. liberal arts colleges required their Economics undergraduates to take Imperfect Markets — the singular source of the department’s pride and a course meticulously designed to make students abhor the discipline, and inspire self-loathing?

“If people don’t save their money, they spend it. And if they spend it, the stock market goes up,” explained Flition. “Therefore, the Saadiyat campus should finally serve as the portal of ideas and contribute something to the world.” He further elaborated on his plan. “We’ll start with unimportant things, like government agencies. We’ll double their paychecks, but make two-thirds of them expire at the end of each week and usable at only ‘approved’ vendors!”

Two weeks into this experiment being conducted in Washington DC and Berlin, there is nary a banana or a chicken breast to be found in the grocery store aisles on a Sunday night — supermarket food waste is down by half. But residential food waste has doubled. NYUAD has finally made its mark on the world, but the results are ambiguous. Now that the rules are made up and competition doesn’t matter, a McDonald’s happy meal costs 30 AED and a haircut has become the domain of only the rich and fortunate.

At least, for a moment in time, the coffers of the government have increased and the stock market is booming. After learning this lesson, the Economics department plans to spend its entire research budget working on the problem it created itself. In addition, Flition said that another required course must be created. “Sadly, some of the crypto bros who only want to make money are still getting through Imperfect Markets,” he remarked. Thus, NYUAD will once again have the most required economics courses in the world, with the introduction of Saadiyat-side Economics. The essence of this course is that throwing money at every problem until it is solved indeed makes more money. For once, something at NYUAD is applicable to the real world — but not in the way one would expect.