I am writing this letter in response to an advertisement that appeared on page 7 of your Friday, October 25 issue, titled “Students encouraged to try successful Food Court.”

I thought that it was the policy of most reputable publications, when printing an advertisement that has the same format as a news article, to add the disclaimer “Advertisement” so that naive readers are not misled. Perhaps this omission was merely an involuntary mistake.

I would like to correct some misconceptions that may have resulted from your error, as some readers may have actually mistaken this advertisement for a real article and thought that it was the result of unbiased reporting.

The advertisement stated that many ISU students have not yet eaten at the new Memorial Union Food Court.

This is true. The advertisement went on to say that this might be because they don’t know that the new Food Court exists.

While this may be true in some cases, I would like to point out some other, more likely reasons we don’t eat there, which the advertisement failed to mention.

Perhaps we refuse to patronize businesses that caused part of a beautiful old building, the Memorial Union, to be turned into just another mall-style food court.

We prefer places that have a better atmosphere, instead of the glaring lights and uncomfortable chairs carefully calculated to prevent us from lingering and taking up space that could be occupied by the next round of paying customers.

Maybe we don’t want to be manipulated.

Maybe we don’t want our money flowing out of our community and into the pockets of the huge corporations that are taking over this country.

We prefer to spend our money locally, keeping the small businesses of our community thriving.

I bring my lunch, some simple meal I prepared myself from the delicious, fresh, inexpensive, locally-grown produce available at the Ames Farmers’ Market. (Yes, that is an advertisement, but not a paid one.)

Maybe we don’t eat there because the food sucks. Maybe we don’t like the “eight meal choices” of tasteless puffy bread, ground up old dairy cows, gaudy orange processed cheese food, and deep-fried anything.

Maybe, just maybe, we value our lives enough not to kill ourselves with such high-fat, low nutrient fare for the sake of convenience.

Maybe that’s why we’re resisting the Food Court’s attempts to “convince a few more people to use the Union in their daily routine.”

Or maybe we’re protesting the fact that the students had no say in whether or not a mall-style food court should even be built on our campus.

Even though we had no power to determine whether or not it was built, we do have the power to determine whether it stays here or not. We don’t have to hold rallies or attend forums.

All we have to do is not buy anything at the Food Court, and it will wither away. This will be a show of our real power.

This might seem unrealistic. Those franchise restaurants seem unstoppable, the way they’re sprawling across America, spreading disposable packaging, the stink of fryers, and heart disease, putting local restaurants out of business, destroying regional food differences, and making the whole country look like one homogeneous mall.

But it is possible.

I used to live in a college town called Ithaca, N.Y. I saw a McDonald’s move into the Commons, the main shopping district and a popular student hangout. Hardly anyone ate there, and it very quickly went out of business. The great local restaurants are still thriving.

There’s no reason that can’t happen here. We do have the power to determine the character of our campus and our town!

I hope I have successfully counteracted the effects of your editorial error.

Please be more careful in the future.

Melissa A Kacalanos

Grad student

Genetics