This academic year has seen a lot of discussion and debate between those who believe the university should be run as a business and those who believe the university’s primary job is to respond to students’ needs.

The two beliefs are not as conflicting as they might first appear. The better business is the one that recognizes whom its customer base is and wants to please it. The better university is the one that provides the best professors, facilities and research opportunities, which often means looking for outside sources of funding.

Conflict arises when either side is unwilling to see the benefits of the other. A university that is trying to run itself as a business fails when it does not recognize that students are its customer base. A university that is trying to run itself solely on the whims of the student body fails when it does not acknowledge that a university needs to be financially secure in order to provide the resources that will best serve students in the long run.

It would be an understatement to say that these two theories were in conflict this year.

It started with the Iowa State Memorial Union’s desire to place a McDonald’s in the Hub. Most people saw it as an issue of selling out the university to neon-laden, money-hungry, corporate giants. I preferred to target Union Director Mary Jo Mertens for sidestepping student involvement and going outside of the established request for proposals process.

When the controversy hit the papers, did the Memorial Union Board of Directors investigate to see if Mertens had done anything questionable? Not really. Instead, it talked about suing me for libel. An interesting tactic, considering I relied upon my own time on the board, the board’s minutes and a personal interview with Mertens wherein she admitted her acts.

The Union, however, has never truly understood its role or its customer base. The Union is nonprofit, yet management is blindly devoted to making a profit. The mission statement of the Union includes a duty to serve students, faculty, staff, alumni and the community, but the Union fails to realize that students are its cash cow. It receives student fees and students spend entirely too much money there.

The Food Court is an interesting example. When the Food Court was being redesigned, Union management wanted to dispose of the long wooden tables and the thick wooden chairs because they encouraged students to sit in the Commons for hours and just study. Management did not want students to study. They wanted students to spend money, eat and get the hell out. The Student Union Board president objected, but it is pretty clear who won the debate.

Before the renovations, the Commons were always full of students studying for classes. Almost all of them also had food, drinks, or cigarettes they purchased at the Union — a source of funding I believe the Union overlooked in its renovation plans.

Now there are hardly any students in the court at any time other than noon. It would be interesting to see whether the Union is losing any money on the deal. For some reason, though, I have a feeling Union management isn’t going to be very cooperative when I ask for the Union’s financial records.

Another topic that resurfaces from time to time concerns the conflict between research and education.

Research in and of itself is not evil. It strengthens a professor’s knowledge in an area and provides prestige and money to the university. Professors should not be blamed for spending too much time on research. Often, it is not their decision. I provide you with a case in point.

When the boyfriend attended ISU, he studied the hard sciences. His major professor recounted the time when he and other professors confronted a member of the ISU administration with their concerns that they were being asked to spend too much time on research and not enough time in the classroom. They were told that if they didn’t like it, they could leave.

The boyfriend is now going to South Dakota State University, where the regents and administration are truly misguided on the issue. When it came time to rewrite the faculty contracts, the contracts were going to include a provision whereby all research done by university faculty, whether done inside or outside of the university, would become university property.

Someone must have mentioned unconstitutional takings to the administration and regents, because they refrained from putting the provision in the contracts. This was a good move for South Dakota’s university system, considering most faculty were prepared to quit.

We in the university community will never be able to escape the conflict between business goals and democratic goals. It is unreasonable to assume we can have one without the other. We can have a democratic university without any business elements, but it will be one of the worst-funded universities in the nation. We can have a university run completely as a business, but few students will want to attend a school where their interests are brushed aside for the sake of the dollar.

The best we can do is compromise. I hear negotiation is one area where businesses and democracies both excel.

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Theresa Wilson is a graduate student in political science at ISU from Dubuque. She is a second-year law student at Drake University.