The Debacle of the Hotdog Sandwich

The History

On the day of June 28th, 2017, Pranav Chandupatla, George "Gavin" Jones, Dovid Scheinberg, Nathaniel Wright, Grant Arndt, Ansh Nanda, and Zach [last name omitted] (the fellow with the red hair gathered to discuss recent topics over breakfast. As they were breaking bread, George mentioned the broken bread he had had the other day, an open-faced sandwich bought at the Loop in the West Union. The "sandwich" in question was basically two small pizzas with the ingredients baked under the cheese and sauce, but it was included under the sandwich section on the menu nonetheless. Outrage ensued, as Dovid and others protested, stating that the "sandwich" had no right to be addressed as such. As outrage turned to riot, the topic quickly changed from open-air sandwiches to hotdogs and their state in the sandwich hierarchy. In their pursuit of sandwich knowledge, the group was quickly divided, with Pranav, Grant, and Dovid quickly jumping to the stipulation that if a sub was indeed a sandwich then a hotdog must be a sandwich. George and Nathaniel joined the opposition, proclaiming that hotdogs were not sandwiches but rather just hotdogs.

Hotdogs are Sandwiches

Dovid, Grant, and Pranav moved quickly to state that a hot dog was a sandwich based on the reasoning that 1. the bread has to be on opposite sides of the ingredients and 2. that subs are sandwiches. As subs have bread that is not separated, they reasoned that a hot dog was indeed a sandwich as it was, at its core, simply a sub with a different type of meat. Acting on these ideas, the coalition created /a set of guidelines to determine what was a sandwich.

• With two pieces of bread:

Both sides of the argument were generally in consensus that when a topping was covered in two pieces of bread on opposing sides, the food was indeed a sandwich. However, the violent opposition generally arose when the idea of one piece of bread encasing a topping being a sandwich arose.

• With one piece of bread:

When a topping is wrapped (completely encircling) with a single piece of flat bread, that food is not a sandwich. However, due to the sub corollary, a loaf that has been cut, but not completely separated into two pieces, can be used to make a sandwich. The encapsulating factor in both cases must be a grain-based substance such as wheat or whiskey. The council also sustained the supposition that the food must have a tie to the Western world in order to retain a status as a sandwich (e.g. A taco cannot be a sandwich for it has roots in Native American Latin America rather than explicitly ties to the Western culture).

Hotdogs are not Sandwiches

George, Nathaniel, Grant (Before he went WWI Italy on them), and others argued that a hot dog was not in fact a sandwich, and defined a sandwich as having two separate slices of bread between which the inner contents are 'sandwiched.' It was stated that if a hot dog bun were to break into two separate pieces of bread during the eating process, then the hot dog would become a sandwich, but not a moment before. By this definition, a sub sandwich is also not a sandwich, and members of this ideology considered the name to be a misnomer, much like the term 'open-faced sandwich.' These people went back to the original use of the sandwich by the Earl of Sandwich during the mid-1700s, and used this as the basis for a strict definition of what constitutes a sandwich. Others also made arguments that the way one held the food item in question determined whether it was a sandwich, but they were stupid and wrong.

Diaspora

Soon after breakfast, the members of the debate spread to their respective classes, taking the debate and their viewpoints with them. Soon, the topic had become divisive all over the campus, and lasted several days, reaching a climax where multiple people made their cases during their acts in the talent show, such as Alex Nguyen and Grant Arndt. To this day, there is no consensus, and discussion was banned in one class for the sake of the TA's mental health.