In 1995, as a member of the special student fees committee, I recommended the Memorial Union fall under control of Iowa State University and the Board of Regents. The motion was modified for consensus, and it passed to recommend takeover unless the MU implemented the current half-student board. It took the board another two years to put the plan into place long after the MU was gutted and turned into a mall.

Of all the agencies and university functions represented by line items in the fee schedule that year, the MU was the least democratic, least forthcoming, most hostile organization with which the 1995 fees committee dealt. I realized then my requests for financial information would be met with reluctance and hostility.

That aspect remains because the MU is a “nonprofit” organization only loosely affiliated with ISU, unaccountable to taxpayers, legislators, students and parents. It must be opened to the public. Bring it under ISU control or pass a law that requires ISU-affiliated nonprofits to disclose their records.

Even though state dollars, collected as a portion of tuition, subsidize the MU, the corporation’s financial records and even its directors were not available to the public as late as last year.

No bidding process is necessary for contracting, and employees are not protected by state collective bargaining agreements.

An assistant MU director, while presenting in Beardshear, said, “the idea behind the Commons is no longer sit-and-sip, it’s in-and-out. We’re running a business here.” That demonstrated to me what the priorities were at the MU – not students but the bottom line.

Ironically, it was this overly ambitious, misguided entrepreneurial spirit that landed the MU heavily in debt.

The Iowa State University Dining Services Administration Study noted “it must be recognized that the level of debt service incurred for the food service portion of the renovation is simply too high to realistically be repaid through food service revenues.”

So in addition to paying for the renovations that turned private offices into cubicles and the Commons into a mall, students will now have to subsidize alumni donor John Dasher and his corner-on-the-market in the MU McDonald’s Xpress not to mention numerous fiascos over the browsing library, the workspace, the chapel, and the failed “McHub” scandal that brought hundreds of students out to protest a proposed MU McDonald’s on central campus.

This could have been prevented had the MU allowed for democratic participation. Over the years, students told the MU what they wanted, and not until students dangled purse strings, did organizers listen. Current student leaders will tell you: That was then, this is now.

Perhaps. But whether the MU is worthy of more good money is another question altogether.

My advice? Once bitten, twice shy.

David Cmelik

Alumnus

Ames