Iowa State Daily Editorial Board: Tim Davis, Jamey Hansen, Tim Frerking, Chris Mende and Keesia Wirt.

It will be interesting to see how The Hub shapes up with a new McDonald’s scheduled to be located there. The question is: How much commercialism will the university allow on campus?

Iowa State University has commercialism in the Memorial Union, which is expanding with the opening of the Food Court, but the Memorial Union is a corporation in itself, separate from the university. The Hub is not.

The vending machines at The Hub and across campus provide members of the ISU community with needed items.

It is a form of capitalist commercialism few of us could go without.

McDonald’s surely will be used by all and soon will become depended upon by students, faculty and staff.

Now with a McDonald’s restaurant it makes us wonder, what could come next? Other companies will want prime spots, and ISU may be looking to make money by letting them on campus.

It also makes us wonder where this falls under Chapter 23A of the Iowa Code which is the “unfair competition statute.”

If the University Book Store, a self-funded store owned and operated by ISU that still pays rent to the Memorial Union, cannot allow a credit plan because it is unfair to the off-campus bookstore, then is it unfair to off-campus restaurants if McDonald’s is allowed to affiliate itself with ISU, pay rent, and have a prime central campus location?

ISU News Service has said the university does not want central campus to become a commercial zone so “the ‘golden arches’ won’t be prominent on the exterior of The Hub,” although the arches will most likely still be there.

In truth, just by having the restaurant there makes it a commercial zone, sign or no sign.

The university’s mission is education. Perhaps the university plans to have students in restaurant management take classes there, although, we doubt it.

Will the next business district of Ames be located on central campus someday?

If so, we suppose they wouldn’t have “prominent” signs because Iowa State is hiding under the guise of being an educational institution, not a commercial zone.