Watch out Iowans! Your tax dollars will bring prostitution to Ames! Campustown — a red light district? I haven’t laughed this hard in a long time.ÿÿ

The article, “ISU shops snag students’ money,”ÿin Sunday’s Des Moines Register was one of the most irresponsible pieces of yellow journalism I have read in a long time.

What market research was done to show Campustown had the anchors that could ever support a secondary retailer like *Zushy? If *Zushy didn’t consider itself secondary, then where is Iowa State’s women’s fashion store that drove *Zushy out of business?

Burger King and McDonalds closed. I’m sure that has nothing to do with those franchises performing poorly in the worldwide market. McDonald’s has been slashing, selling and closing all year. I’m sure the Atkins diet or the Subway diet or even the poor economy in general have had no effect on the fast-food burger joints.

Speaking of Subway, how can they manage to maintain a Campustown location and a Memorial Union location if McDonald’s failed to do the same? It certainly couldn’t be business practices.

I know private owners run the franchises, but they have the same strategies as the corporations that created them.

Earlier this year Clyde’s Sports Bar and the Hawthorne Market on campus announced changes in their hours due to budget cuts. Why doesn’t this article even mention it? It wasn’t done quietly. They must clearly be winning the battle against Campustown establishments, right?ÿÿ

And how about free CyRide? I’m certain the increase in head counts has nothing to do with the growing numbers of ISU students living off campus and them now choosing to ride the bus rather than try to find a place to park. I’m sure the increase in CyRide traffic is exclusively dorm residents taking the bus to all the stores away from Campustown.

And when I lived in the dorms, all I could dream about was riding the bus to North Grand. Nobody in the dorms had a car. Oh, wait. That was maybe true 20 years ago, but hardly the case today. How long has the Memorial Union had the chain restaurants downstairs? I’m sure it usually takes almost a decade for their effects to be felt by the rest of the Ames community.

Give me a break! The fact is, businesses have always come and gone in Campustown. It’s been like that for years. Reaching college students is niche marketing and is constantly changing. Is Iowa State to blame for the faltering downtown Ames district?ÿÿWho would’ve thought static business models failing to adapt to a dynamic market could ever hurt a business?

No hard facts, no numbers, no convincing evidence were presented in a “non-editorial” article. Instead, we learn that the biggest whiners get the most attention and sympathy.

It’s been awhile since I took an economics class, but isn’t competition what our capitalist system was built on?

Crybaby business owners and “leading” newspapers with biased and horrendous journalism aren’t part of what makes Iowa great. They only made it easier for me to move away this past summer. Iowa born and bred, I stuck around even after I graduated from schoolÿmore than three years ago. Antiquated attitudes and archaic thinking are what changed my mind.

Tim Johnson

Alumnus

Roseville, Minn.