Some people see the issue GSB Senator David Ammann has raised regarding Coca-Cola’s monopoly contract as trivial and silly. By itself it is a very minor issue. I’m not even sure why students drink so much soda. But hey, if you want to make overpriced colored sugar water a regular part of your diet, go right ahead. Have a Coke and a smile.

Anyway, the Coke monopoly is more symbolic than anything else. Who decides what vending machines go on campus? After all, this campus is public property.

Steven Martens (in his column in Wednesday’s Daily) compares public property at a public university to private restaurants.

This is like comparing apples and oranges. Restaurant owners can decide whether they offer Pepsi or Coke. It’s private property and if you don’t like it you can “vote with your feet” and go someplace else.

A public university should be accountable to taxpayers, students, faculty and staff. Warren Madden and others would probably like us to see private restaurants and public universities as the same thing.

This summer he wanted to put a Mcdonald’s in the Hub. He once said on the TV news to those who opposed it, “I’ll guess they’ll just have to vote with their feet.”

This university does not belong to Warren Madden, Martin Jischke, Mary Jo Mertens or any of the other six-figured administrators who cut their dirty deals behind closed doors in plush offices. It belongs to the public.

The only force capable of resisting the tyranny of the few resides in the mass political action of the many. That’s the lesson of the McHub snafu on campus this summer. That’s a very profound lesson.

Anyway, maybe a monopoly Coke contract is in the public interest. Maybe that’s what the majority of the public wants. What do you think?

That’s something to be debated and decided by the citizens of Iowa and the Iowa State community. Beyond that, I’d like to live in a society where economic power is subject to democratic control. Would you?

The more we let the wealthy few decide whether we have jobs and how much they pay, whether we grow up in toxic chemical exposures, whether we’re sent off to foreign adventures, whether we’re bled dry in regressive taxes going to unproductive investments, and how high tuitions are, the more it’s a net loss for the vast majority of the public.

One of the reasons some of us have raised the issue of commercialization on campus is that the commercialization of university research comes at a great cost to students. The dirty truth behind the massive tuition increases since 1980 resides in the increased public subsidization of corporate research at universities.

An excellent article on this can be found in the March 1993 Atlantic Monthly. The article is called “Why College Tuitions Are So High,” by Elliot Negrin.

The Bayh-Dole Act, also known as the University-Small Business Patent Act, shifted university research from basic research to applied research.

This required a huge amount of up-front investment.

This investment is paid for by increased tuitions, the cutting back of course offerings, increased class sizes, and programs without corporate sponsors being put on shoe-string budgets.

So I share Amman’s disgust at the Coke sign on the message board in front of Hilton Coliseum.

It’s a symbol of a quality, affordable education being sacrificed at the alters of mega-corporations and their retainers at Iowa State University.

Some GSB senators wrote a bill (which was withdrawn) to “censure” the Iowa State Daily for what they perceive as misrepresentation, sensationalism and ” … inaccurate information without appropriate research done.”

There’s nothing wrong with GSB expressing its opinion on this. Daily employees should be accountable to students and the general public. Daily employees should always strive to do a better job at covering the news.

I say let it all hang out. If you feel a reporter or columnist is being inaccurate, biased, narrow, shallow, redundant or whatever with their writing, by all means let that reporter or columnist know.

Write them a note and put it in their mail box at 108 Hamilton Hall. Call them at the office or whatever. Feedback is a good thing for any writer.

Daily Editor Chris Miller was critical of the bill because he disagrees with the premise that Daily coverage has been poor. As I understand it much of the debate is focused on the question: “Has the Daily been being informative and accurate?” There’s nothing wrong with asking that question.

GSB Senator Mark Holm says, “It seems that the Daily always talks bad about the GSB.”

So what?

If you’re in GSB, you should expect to be criticized and held up to close public scrutiny. If you can’t stand the heat then stay out of the kitchen.

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Drew Chebuhar is a senior in journalism and mass communication from Muscatine.