Cass McBride pulled into the parking lot of Atlantic Cape Community College just as the morning fog was lifting. The campus was quieter than she remembered—fewer cars, fewer conversations, fewer reasons to linger. The culinary arts building stood at the edge, windows clouded with dust, the café shuttered and dark.
Javi Sandoval sat beside her, scrolling through an email on his cracked phone screen. The college had just announced what everyone already knew: Atlantic Cape’s culinary program would be consolidated with Rowan College at Burlington County by the fall. The words were clean and administrative—“efficiency,” “realignment,” “cost savings”—but everyone understood the message. This place was being downsized, absorbed, and eventually erased.
“They’re moving all the classes to Mt. Holly,” Javi said. “That’s over an hour away. No shuttle, no support. Just go if you can. Or don’t.”
Cass nodded, her hands resting on a worn-out canvas bag filled with cookbooks and a half-used chef’s coat. “They say it’s about opportunity. But it feels like they’re just trimming away everything that made this place ours.”
Inside the student center, the old café was locked, its chalkboard menu still faintly showing specials from months ago—creamy risotto, grilled seasonal vegetables, apple tart. Meals once made by students, for staff and faculty, as part of their hands-on learning.
They walked around to the back hallway near the faculty offices, hoping to find someone who could give them real answers. That’s where they found Professor Reilly, sitting on a bench with a cardboard box beside him—books, a stained apron, and a union button that read: EDUCATION IS NOT A BUSINESS.
Reilly had taught part-time in the culinary program for over a decade—early morning sections, night classes, summer workshops. He was known for lecturing about labor history in the middle of baking demonstrations, quoting Eugene V. Debs while folding dough.
“They gave me fifteen minutes,” he said when Cass asked what had happened. “No severance. Just a letter. Said my ‘contract wasn’t renewed due to program restructuring.’ They didn’t even spell my name right.”
Javi sat down next to him. “I thought you were protected. Weren’t you in the union?”
Reilly chuckled. “We tried. We organized. But it’s hard when most of us are part-time and disposable. Admin smiles during bargaining, then turns around and guts your job through ‘curricular updates.’ They always find a way.”
Cass asked him if he’d stay in the area.
“I’ll stay,” he said. “Because this is where the students are. Because someone needs to remind them they’re not crazy for wanting more than just job training and debt. They deserve an education that feeds the soul, not just the economy.”
That night, Cass and Javi drove out past Pleasantville, where empty storefronts now stood beside a few remaining restaurants, barbershops, and bodegas. They passed through Margate and Ventnor, where beach homes glowed in early evening light, and the golf courses were still lush and quiet. In Somers Point, they saw the “Help Wanted” signs outside the waterfront restaurants—jobs with no benefits and long hours, perfect for students who no longer had classes to attend.
The casinos in Atlantic City still blinked and buzzed, but the crowds were thinner, and most of the profits came from online betting now—clicks from phones, not chips on tables.
They camped that evening just off Route 542, in a small clearing where the Pines bent gently in the wind. The stars came out slowly.
“I miss the kitchen,” Javi said. “The way Reilly used to talk about food—like it was a kind of justice.”
Cass pulled out her copy of The Grapes of Wrath, the one Reilly had recommended. She turned to a page he had dog-eared for her. “‘And the little screaming fact that sounds through all history: repression works only to strengthen and knit the repressed.’”
Javi looked up at the trees. “I keep thinking about people like Bernie Sanders and AOC. The way they talk about socialism, unions, public schools—for them, it’s not just politics. It’s survival. Dignity. Like what Reilly was trying to teach.”
Cass smiled, the firelight flickering on her face. “Yeah. It makes you think maybe this isn’t the end. Maybe it’s the start of something different.”
The wind moved through the Pines, steady and low, like an old voice telling stories to those who still cared to listen.
And for now, that was enough.
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