The goal, for some, is to make the university as privatized as possible. The plan is to start with the Iowa State Food Service.

A resolution introduced at Wednesday night’s Government of the Student Body meeting states: “GSB recommends that the state Board of Regents seriously look into privatizing the residence hall food service department.”

Privatizing is bringing in private, outside enterprise to take over services provided by a university department.

Mark Nimmer, off campus, is the author. He said his goal with the resolution is to encourage regent members to study privatizing the food service and report back to the students with the results.

“It just goes with the idea that we want to see as much of the university as possible be privatized or associated with private business,” Nimmer said.

“That government is best that governs least,” he said, borrowing a well-known phrase.

The resolution, which will be debated next week, hints that some regents may support the measure. But that’s news to one regents official.

Robert Barak, deputy executive director of the Regents Office, said there may have been a conversation overheard between members of the board during a confirmation hearing, but he said he has not heard about a move to privatize the Iowa State Food Service.

“There is absolutely nothing in front of the board at this time about that. There has been nothing said that I am aware of,” he said. “However, the board has always encouraged the institutions to cooperate with other institutions whenever that is feasible.”

Nimmer said the idea to privatize is not new to Iowa State. Though no schools in Iowa have privatized food service, Nimmer said several schools in other states have. “From what I understand nationwide, universities that run their own food services have become the exception, not the rule,” Nimmer said.

The best advantage to privatization is the cost benefit to the university, he said. Nimmer, who didn’t cite specific numbers, said he does not know what would happen to Food Service employees if it was privatized.

“I’m not sure how the exact transition would work,” he said. “I would assume that whatever contracting company took over Food Service, it would take advantage of the students who are there.”

Support is far from unanimous.

Rick Terrones, president of American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees of Ames said it would be difficult for Food Service to compete with a private enterprise and would cost the university more to contract out.

“If they were successful they would be preparing the food at a very, very low rate, almost impossible to compete with.

“If they did that they’d have to bring those rates up in the future,” Terrones said.

He said there are several disadvantages to privatizing Food Service, citing higher costs, lower wages for employees and poor food quality.

“I don’t think a private industry can compete with this food service. They provide food at a low cost. They pay their employees at a decent wage so they get good labor,” he said. “It would be hard for them to undercut it, unless they got some cheap food.”

He said none of the universities in Iowa has privatized food service, though privatization has happened to several campus services, including custodial services at ISU’s College of Design.

Rab Mukerjea, assistant to the president for budget planning and analysis, was interim dean of the College of Design when the janitorial service was privatized in 1993.

“In concept, what we did was to experiment with the idea through the Office of the Vice President for Business and Finance to agree for us to have an experimental period, for one or two years,” Mukerjea said.

The services were privatized for about two years, but the college then went back to using Facilities Planning and Management services.

“There were several reasons [to privatize]. At the time there were certain kinds of services that weren’t provided by the university custodial service,” he said.

Randy Alexander, director of the Department of Residence, and Stewart Burger, director of Food Service, could not be reached for comment.