When she checked her e-mail the Monday morning after Spring Break, Maintenance Shop employee Kelly Considine read a message sent to all Memorial Union directors and M-Shop employees saying the M-Shop would be eliminating its dining services.

The e-mail was news to Considine.

Considine, senior in horticulture, said she did not know at the time whether this meant her hours would be cut at the M-Shop slightly or completely. She said she was worried the e-mail meant the M-Shop was closing.

“The e-mail was basically a recommendation to close down the M-Shop that Friday,” she said. “I called around and nobody else had heard about it.”

Richard Reynolds, director of the Memorial Union, said he sent the e-mail.

“Richard and I have previously talked about [pulling dining services at the M-Shop],” said Jon Lewis, director of ISU Dining. “Unfortunately, he used the words ‘will be closing,’ and at that time, the decision was not final to pull dining services from the M-Shop. That was an error.”

Reynolds said he neglected to mention in the e-mail that the plan to cut dining services was a proposal.

“The e-mail I sent was to keep students informed, as many of my staff were aware ISU Dining was looking to make cutbacks,” he said.

“The message got into general circulation, as they often do, and because it didn’t say ‘proposal,’ people became alarmed of the initial closing of dining services at the M-Shop.”

ISU Dining has experienced mounting pressure to eliminate debt from on-campus facilities, Reynolds said.

As part of this initiative, he said lunch services at the Memorial Union’s M-Shop ended Friday.

Considine said she thinks her hours will be cut, but M-Shop employees will be sent to different on-campus dining facilities.

“We were asked to look at any operation where expenses exceeded revenues,” Lewis said. “Expenses were exceeding the revenues we were taking in at several of our facilities, including the M-Shop.”

The decision was also fueled by the facility’s location, the number of students it served on a day-to-day basis and its proximity to other food venues, Lewis said.

“The M-Shop’s lunch service served the fewest lunch patrons, smaller than any other on-campus facility,” he said. “We feel there are enough food service venues in the immediate area to handle students’ needs without the M-Shop.”

Prior to 2003, the Memorial Union was a non-profit, private corporation, Reynolds said.

With this status, it was responsible for its own retail outlets and food services, including the M-Shop and catering.

The Memorial Union merged with Iowa State in 2003, giving the university the responsibility of running its dining services and retail outlets, Reynolds said.

The university has managed the M-Shop since fall 2003, even while incurring huge losses, Reynolds said.

“This was a result mainly of a diminishing student body, decreasing the size of retail consumers able to utilize retail food venues at the Memorial Union,” he said.

Reynolds said the only way dining services could possibly return to the M-Shop would be if there was an increase in enrollment that specifically resulted in a greater demand for food outlets.

Lewis said other ISU Dining facilities are operating under similar circumstances.

“Hawthorn Market & Cafe is in the same situation, but we are doing our best to balance the books at this facility so we don’t have to close it down,” Lewis said. “Unlike the Memorial Union, the Hawthorn Market & Cafe is a stand alone facility, and is the only facility by the Frederiksen Court apartments. We will have that operation at least breaking even as soon as we can.”