It is high time we did something about this Coke monopoly on campus. How much can the Coca-Cola company really be giving Iowa State for their heinous stranglehold on the hearts, minds and taste buds of what is clearly the Pepsi generation? No amount is enough!

We should be opposed to this kind of monopoly no matter how many millions a corporation wants to stick down the G-string of our collective Iowa State zeitgeist.

They can take our pop, but they’ll never take our freedom! Whatever happened to taking a stand on principles? Don’t we have any?

I guess that is what happens when hippies turned yuppies come into their own. They remember that cheesy hippie Coke anthem about teaching the world to sing and figure “why not, we could use the cash.”

We are perfectly free to say that Coke tastes like battery acid with sweet -n- low in it, no matter how much they pay our overlords.

What has Coke given the world besides a series of lame polar bear commercials and rotten teeth? These people weren’t even aware of their own place in pop culture until they tried to force New Coke on the public in the mid-’80s with that Max Headroom campaign. Okay, the campaign was cool. Let’s give credit where it’s due.

This may seem like a trivial subject, but when you consider the growing corporate power in the United States and the world, it becomes more obvious that this is one symptom of greater disease.

It isn’t bad enough that corporations force their products down our throats in commercials, sponsorship and the purchase of landmarks. Now they are trying to figure out new and improved ways to get our business.

In the guise of charity and good will, they hand money to universities for exclusive campus rights. This is not only unfair to those of us who take pride in our right as Americans to choose what kind of sugar water we want to suck down, but also to smaller businesses that lose the right to fairly compete with the big boys.

But it is time for a change.

In the spirit of fair competition with an eye towards corporate funding, I think we should let Shasta have its turn. Who doesn’t love Shasta? Just a few freaks and demented loners, that’s all.

I remember drinking can after can in the back of my uncle’s pick-up on the way to Grandpa LaMiller’s in Missouri. In the ’70s, pop had pull tabs and an element of danger. Good times.

Shasta offers some things that Coke doesn’t. Variety is one of them. What do you get with Coke — Cherry Coke? Diet Coke? Citra? That’s about it.

Here are some of Shasta’s flavors: Black cherry, cola, cherry cola, club soda, cranberry, creme soda, Dr. Shasta, fruit punch, ginger ale, grape, kiwi-strawberry, Moon Mist, orange, pineapple, pineapple-orange, raspberry creme, red pop, root beer, ruby-red grapefruit, strawberry, strawberry-peach, twist lime lemon, and that is just for starters. There’s more.

In the spirit of diversity they also offer a line which they refer to as “Hispanic Flavors”: Guava passion fruit, horchata, Jamaica, mango, manzana and tamarindo. Can you believe this? I don’t even know what half of these things are, but I am betting they rock harder than Sprite.

So I made a call to the National Beverage Corporation which owns Shasta to ask them a few questions about their availability and willingness to operate a monopoly on our campus.

I spoke with Brent Bott in their public relations department. Usually these guys can’t wait to talk to someone in the press just to get their product’s name out there for free.

But Brent seemed positively paranoid about the prospect of saying anything to me which might get him in trouble with the powers that be.

“I’m not going to say anything against Coke,” Bott said.

“I just wanted to ask some general questions about Shasta like: Would Shasta ever consider operating a monopoly on the Iowa State campus like Coke?”

“We’re a public corporation and I just wouldn’t feel comfortable saying anything against Coke.”

Curiouser and curiouser.

The only thing I could get out of him was a little bragging about their Hispanic line.

“Hispanics are the largest growing area of the population,” said Bott. “So we’ve developed a line to reflect that need.” Now that’s forward thinking and progressive.

But since when won’t one company spokesman go into great detail about his company’s product? What kind of dread fear could this man have of the competition that he would remain tight-lipped when an excellent opportunity presented itself to him?

It does give one pause. Maybe this Coke thing is just a simple marketing scheme to expand into niche markets and not a dark conspiracy; who knows?

All I want is variety and to me that means Shasta.

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Greg Jerrett is a graduate student in English from Council Bluffs. He is opinion editor of the Daily.