UConn Student Craving Mac And Cheese Winds Up In Handcuffs [Viral Video]
A University of Connecticut student who experienced an apparent cafeteria “meltdown” over a craving for bacon jalapeño mac and cheese now faces criminal charges.
The original cell phone video of the confrontation between the student apparently jonesing for mac and cheese and an even-tempered food court manager in the crowded student union on the Storrs campus has more than 500,000 hits on YouTube so far.
The altercation on Sunday night had its source in that the very hungry student who demanded mac and cheese, age 19 (i.e., by definition an underage drinker), allegedly brought an open container of booze into the dining hall, at which point the manager asked him to please leave the premises.
With his mac and cheese demands unmet, the NSFW footage embedded below shows the student berating and cursing out the manager with several F-bombs, pushing him several times, and at the end of the encounter spitting in his face as a campus cop hustled him out of the venue.
Coming to the assistance of the manager, a no-nonsense and loyal restaurant chef took the student down to the floor after he again pushed the manager in what seems like an eternity (but was only about eight minutes) before the university cop arrived on the scene and applied the handcuffs.
“One University of Connecticut undergrad recently learned the hard way that college is not the macaroni-and-cheese utopia his forefathers had promised him,” New York magazine joked.
As per multiple media accounts, the student in question who got in the manager’s face and who also allegedly was drunk at the time is identified as Luke Gatti of Bayville, New York.
According to the Hartford Courant, the UConn student faces charges of second-degree breach of peace and first degree criminal trespass and is due back in court on October 13. “Gatti was previously a student at the University of Massachusetts and was twice arrested last year on disorderly conduct charges, according to the Daily Hampshire Gazette in Northampton, Massachusetts,” the Courant added.
“The student’s behavior was abhorrent, but in his defense, jalapeno mac and cheese sounds delicious,” USA TODAY quipped about the incident.
Highlighting what happened in the mac and cheese tirade after the student was refused service at the Union Street Market and was unwilling to follow the manager’s sensible recommendation to back off, Heavy.com provided this summary.
“For several minutes, Gatti yelled that he wanted bacon jalapeno mac and cheese, and screamed insults at the manager, calling him a ‘f*g,’ and a ‘f****g idiot.’ During the video, the manager shows extreme patience, trying to get Gatti to leave on his own before police arrive. Others also try to intervene, including fellow students and another cafeteria worker, who tells Gatti to take it outside. Eventually, Gatti becomes overheated and shoves the manager. An employee in a chef’s hat had enough, coming to his boss’s aid and taking Gatti down to the ground.”
Citing federal privacy regulations, a UConn representative would not comment specifically as to whether any academic discipline might be forthcoming.
“Generally speaking, any UConn student found to have violated the provisions of the Student Code may face penalties imposed by the Division of Student Affairs that range from probation to expulsion,” the spokeswoman noted.
A commenter at Barstool Sports claimed to have some inside information about the mac and cheese melee at UConn.
‘They were actually out of mac and cheese; what you didn’t see before the cameras start rolling was the kid yelling at employees how there wasn’t any more mac and cheese when given alternatives the kid started throwing a tantrum and started swigging from an open bottle…that is when the manager got involved and the video started.”
[images via YouTube]
