McDonald’s has long since ceased its attempt to invade the Hub and everything on the ISU campus is back to the way it should be.

Think again.

Go back and find the Daily with the big headline regarding the death of the McDonald’s in the Hub proposal. There you will also find a piece on the $1 million bribe which John Pappajohn gave ISU, the money to be used to find a new technology transfer center within the university.

In other words, the battle of the McHub may have been won, but the war for control of ISU is still being lost by the people and students of Iowa.

Unfortunately, John Dasher’s nearly successful attempt at installing a McDonald’s in the Hub is not an isolated incident. It is merely, like the stench now created by Subway and Panda Chinese Foods in the union, a very noticeable symptom of a disease that runs to the heart of this and many other universities.

For too long our professors have been encouraged to seek money from corporations, a practice which allows corporations to set the agenda for university research.

Corporate-funded research serves the desires of corporations, not the needs of the people of Iowa or the students of Iowa State.

Upon slightly closer examination it amounts to little more than yet another form of corporate welfare: the people of Iowa are forced to subsidize a university whose mission is— make sure that the rich get richer.

Students should be upset about this because it means their educations are given, at best, secondary importance behind the profits of investors and corporations.

Professors should be upset about this because of what is going on in Minnesota where regents are trying to make it possible to dismiss tenured faculty who are not “productive” enough. What exactly does that mean?

Given the present atmosphere, it would likely mean that professors will lose their jobs if they do not engage in research that is profitable for the economic elite.

Its possible interpretation is ambiguous enough that professors who dare to speak up and thus are “counter-productive” to the mission (as our elite class defines it) of the university may also lose their jobs.

That would amount to nothing more than censorship, and those like Professor Robert Hollinger may someday, as he has predicted, find themselves looking for new jobs.

Why are members of the economic elite like John Pappajohn so much in favor of corporate-funded and technology transfer research?

For the simple reason that these economic elitists (say, for instance, venture capitalists) are the people who will profit from it.

Why are political elitists like Terry Branstad and Bonnie Campbell (both of whom campaigned on promises to increase technology transfer research at our universities) so much in favor of this type of research?

Because they are willing to support anything that assures them the financial backing of the economic elite. Meanwhile the media has made sure that criticisms of this phenomenon, which is really — like the much touted “empowerment zones” —nothing but an exercise in trickle-down economics, remain unheard by most Iowans.

The Des Moines Register, for instance, was more than willing to print the lengthy apologies of university administrators regarding the McDonald’s Hub proposal this summer, but its opinion page was too full of attacks on 4-H for being “socialist” to make room for any response regarding the real problems at ISU.

As for technology transfer, every opinion writing from “The Old Reporter” to the editor thinks it a wonderful idea.

It is hard to blame them, though, for if they all of a sudden got an inspiration to begin actually pointing out the manner in which the elite screw us over they would be out on the streets faster than their non-scabbing colleagues in Detroit.

After all, it is the power elite who owns The Register and employs them, and consequently, it is the same elite who can easily “unemploy” them.

Iowa State will follow one of two courses. Either it will keep on in the direction it is presently going, becoming more and more an institution used by the economic elite to generate unearned income for itself, or it could become an educational institution, having the primary goal of increasing the amount of economic democracy in our society.

The former is merely Jischke’s untenable reinterpretation of the mission of this university: enrich and empower those who are already wealthy and powerful, and the benefits will magically trickle down to those belonging to lower castes.

It is not hard to see that the philosophy by which this university is administrated is in fact identical to the rationalization for capital gains tax cuts.

When Jischke refers to “the land grant mission of ISU” he is actually referring to what he and other elitists have rendered into its “trickle-down” mission.

Where has this mission led us? The M.U. now looks more like a shopping mall food court than any area of North Grand Mall.

Animation Inc. is located in Ames, serving as a reminder of how much one unscrupulous professor can profit by abusing his privileges.

The participants in athletic programs at ISU are little more than spokespersons in favor of exploitation and murder in the third world.

Yet, the powerful do not yet think that we are bound tight enough under their yoke. Now, we must be infected with Pappajaundice.

Our universities seem to become sicker every semester under the leadership of incompetent presidents, selfish administrators, Branstad’s drinking buddies (i.e. our Board of Regents), and morally bankrupt politicians.

At times like this we would have to be blind to not also include self-serving economic elitists who buy their power and are not accountable to anyone.

In addition to the puss-filled boils which are now breaking out on our campus (especially in the Memorial Union), soon the symptoms of ISU’s illness will include a yellowish discoloration.

Members of the Iowa State community should not sit back while our university is raped.

We should tell Pappajohn to stick his ill-gotten booty up his own arse, not up ours.

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Tyler Wayne Roach is a senior in philosophy, English and religious studies.