![A dinner table. [Shutterstock]](https://images.dailycaller.com/image/width=960,height=411,fit=cover,f=auto/https://cdn01.dailycaller.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/shutterstock_348320018-e1462024480943.jpg "A dinner table. [Shutterstock]")
The University of New Hampshire (UNH) has issued an apology after spending $17,520 on a single table for a newly-renovated dining hall.
The chef’s table in Holloway Commons, custom-made at a workship in Chicago and then shipped out to the school, doesn’t just provide elevated support for food and other items. It also provides an illuminated top with no fewer than eight LED lights that change colors throughout the day. According to The New Hampshire, the fancy table was purchased as part of a master plan to “draw members of the UNH and Durham communities into the dining hall to experience what it has to offer.”
Once they came in and encountered the visual tour de force of the table, it was hoped that they would decide to purchase a university meal plan, which costs a mere $2000 a semester.
Two weeks ago UNH was bragging about the spiffy table on Facebook, even though it cost as much as an entire year of in-state tuition at the school (which is the sixth-most expensive public school in the country). The table can seat 16 people, so each seat costs a cool $1,098.13.
Now, in hindsight, UNH is realizing that buying an expensive table instead of, say, giving somebody a full-ride scholarship may have been a little wasteful.
“Having a chef’s table was a good idea in that it allows the dining staff to interact with students, demonstrate healthy cooking techniques and share nutrition education,” university spokeswoman Erika Mantz told Boston.com in a statement. “But much less money should and could have been spent to achieve the same outcome.”
Surprisingly, this isn’t even close to being the most expensive table purchased by a public Northeastern college. In 2014, Kean University in New Jersey raised eyebrows by spending $219,000 on a high-tech table of its own, which it said would elevate the regional school’s meeting spaces to a “world-class” level.
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