They’ve gone too far. They hiked tuition and I didn’t say much about it. They’re cutting back on CyRide routes and I told myself I would manage anyway. They’ve even gone so far as to propose combining two colleges, and students and faculty were forced to get by. The great scythe of budget cuts has finally cut into my personal life though, as they are now taking away the ability to drink beer in a restaurant on campus at noon on a Wednesday.

That’s right; the Maintenance Shop will officially be closed as a business this semester — the only question is when it finally shuts down.

Musical shows and acts will still perform there as usual, but they will be the only aspect of the M-Shop that will remain. No more food and no more beer on campus during the day. When I wrote this column, the exact time of the M-Shop’s closing had not been set, but it most certainly will shut down.

Granted, I have a conflict of interest because I work at the M-Shop and, when it closes, that means I’ll be out of a job. So that sucks for me. But I’m trying to tell people that when you can’t even get a cold beer at the M-Shop after a rough engineering final on campus, we all suffer. A special little place inside us all withers and slowly dies, dooming us to drink soda in cookie-cutter cafes with hard, plastic chairs and drab walls.

The M-Shop has character and history. It is a mainstay of this university as much as the Campanile or the union itself. You can’t just replace a setting like the M-Shop.

The petitions signed in the M-Shop last week by hundreds of people are testament to how many people enjoy going there to eat. Is the university going to decide the Campanile just isn’t edgy enough any more and replace that too? Some things are more important than money.

I can handle losing a job. People lose jobs, and that is just a fact of life. What disturbs me is the future of the M-Shop as a music venue is now also in question. “They” have said the music program at the M-Shop will continue as planned. The only question is, for how long?

Let’s face it; the M-Shop is arguably one of the best venues in town and sometimes the only reason certain bands make an out-of-the-way stop in Ames. For a little place, it certainly has had a lot of drawing power over the years. Go look at the signed pictures on the walls if you doubt me. We would lose more than we can measure if they shut down the M-Shop completely.

This whole thing is just another instance of the university cutting when it should be reforming.

The university is plagued by the same problems as any inefficient business — too much overhead, too much bureaucracy, too many chefs in one kitchen — call it what you want. So, instead of the university reforming itself to become more streamlined and effective as a provider of services, they’ve jacked up prices (tuition) and taken the red pen to anything that isn’t absolutely necessary.

To say closing the M-Shop is small potatoes might be right. It’s just one fewer place to eat and drink beer on campus, right? You can always go to the food court and treat yourself to McDonald’s or another restaurant you can find on any street in America and have even less of a reason to stop in by the union.

Life will go on, but the M-Shop is just another sad casualty of hard financial times.

Look forward to an endless future of paying more and getting less.