[Englecturers] Coffee, Commons, and campus issues

[Carole Fabricant]

Hi folks,

 

Please bear with me; I'll be as concise as possible (though we all realize
that brevity is not my forte).

 

Returning to campus after the holiday break (oh joy!), I arranged to meet a
friend near the new student Commons so that we could sit for a bit and catch
up on things over a cappuccino.  We were appalled to discover that the
coffee/espresso bar that had always been part of the indoor cafeteria in the
old Commons was no longer there - it had apparently been unceremoniously
booted out, presumably to make room to squeeze in a few more of the 28
different varieties of the same fast-food crap that are now on offer there.
No one could tell us where it had disappeared to.  Finally a student pointed
vaguely in the direction of the Bookstore and told us the coffee bar had
been moved into a truck (!!) that was located somewhere out yonder.  By this
time my friend had to leave but I (intrepid explorer that I am) decided to
head out and search for it myself, urged on by a strong feeling that at a
campus of - what is it now, 16,000 students? - one should be able to
purchase a cappuccino and have a pleasant place to sit down and drink it.
After 'beating the bush' for about a half-hour and asking many people about
its location (no one knew, not even inside the Bookstore) I finally stumbled
onto it.  It was indeed housed in a truck - literally; parked out in the
boonies past the Bookstore.

 

Needless to say, it's now a solely cash-and-carry operation.  There's no
place nearby to sit and savor the coffee while conversing with friends or
reading a book.  I might add there's no place to sit and rest for the makers
of the cappuccino either.  They're on their feet all day long, standing in a
drafty truck without heating or any amenities whatever.  I spoke at length
with one of them (whom I knew from the old indoor espresso bar) and she
complained bitterly about the working conditions and the arbitrary decision
to banish the bar from the Commons proper (fellow union members, take note).
I bought a cappuccino and scurried back to my office - after all, there's
nowhere in the Commons area that's conducive to hanging out for any length
of time more than 3 seconds.

 

As an aside, I might add that there's no such place anywhere else on campus
either.  A few years back the Barn was a pleasant, comfy, kick-back kind of
place where you could hang out and talk to friends over a couple of beers.
The last time I went in there it had metamorphosed into some grotesque
version of a tacky provincial airport terminal cafeteria - which, to add
insult to injury, no longer even served beer (or much else that one would
want, as far as I could tell).  I promptly left the premises and haven't
returned since.

 

Perhaps some of you may think this matter is trivial, but I myself find this
situation not only infuriating and appalling, but also an only too apt
reflection of other larger (and unquestionably serious) problems with the
campus.  In the supposedly 'bad' old days, when UCR was struggling for
survival with 4500 students, the Commons area had a comfortable, funky
coffee-house where people could get together, enjoy their daily dose of
java, talk, plan lessons or mayhem, or whatever.  Now that we're "thriving"
(ahem), with an ever-growing student body, we have a Commons that's about as
homey and comfortable as a food court in a cheesy down-scale shopping mall -
one that doesn't even off the kind of basic amenities one would take for
granted even on a campus like Podunk State (which I daresay UCR is beginning
to resemble more and more).

 

The corporate bureaucrats who made the decision about what the Commons
should look like and what should and shouldn't be housed in it are clearly
'kissing cousins' to the ones who are making educational and institutional
decisions that affect every one of us on a daily basis.  Their decision to
throw out the espresso bar no doubt reflects their desire for a rapid
turnover of customers in the Commons - ones willing to pay a chunk to stuff
their faces with overpriced fast food (disguised as different 'ethnic' [!]
'cuisines' [!!]) and then leave the premises to make room for other
customers who will do the same.  Obviously people who only want to buy a cup
of coffee and sit for a while nursing it while doing other things are not
the kind of consumers these bureaucrats want - after all, they take up space
and are paying relatively little for the 'privilege' of doing so.  The last
thing these bureaucrats want to do is to provide a place where students and
faculty can gather, leisurely sip their drug of choice, and talk - who
knows, maybe even (horrors!) conspire, agitate, and organize.  Am I the only
one who sees a parallel with the recent uncontrolled growth of the campus,
which has resulted in a mindless processing of bodies through the system as
quickly as possible, regardless of whether or not anything even vaguely
resembling a 'real' (meaningful) education is taking place? 

 

It's bad enough this is the ugliest campus in the continental United States,
does it also have to be the most inhospitable and uncivilized?  No wonder
most of the newer faculty live as far from campus as possible - and why,
after finishing one's classes, one wants to 'get the hell out of Dodge' as
quickly as possible.  What is there to hang around for?  I teach evening
classes, and walking across campus to and from them is like walking through
a cemetery - and an especially creepy one at that.  Nothing is open, there's
no place to sit down and have a quick coffee or snack, there's absolutely
nothing to keep a body (or mind, or soul) alive.  Is it any wonder that the
minute class ends my students scurry away like rats off a sinking ship,
anxious to escape the dark, forbidding campus with life and limb intact?
(Apparently the Powers That Be in this joint, for all their chest-thumping
promotion of new "cutting-edge" technologies, have never heard of that good
old-fashioned one called electricity.)

 

In my opinion, the saddest thing about this situation is that many of our
undergrads who are natives of the 'Inland Empire', having basically grown up
in the middle of an endless shopping mall, having nothing to compare this
campus with and thus don't know any better - have no clue that there are
actually (far more desirable and attractive) alternatives out there.  They
think this is what a university should look like and what it should be
offering those who attend it.  It doesn't occur to them that a campus can,
and should, be held to account for providing so pitifully little (in basic
resources and amenities) in exchange for so much (in tuition and other
fees).

 

The entire corporate-bureaucratic structure of the university is to blame
for these lamentable circumstances; but the person most immediately and
directly responsible for overseeing the Commons, and for banishing the
coffee bar from it, is a man by the name of Andy Plumley, who's an Assistant
Vice-Chancellor in the Housing Services Administration.  If any of the
points I've made in this email strike a sympathetic chord in you (regardless
of whether or not you're a coffee addict like me, or even a coffee drinker
at all), I would urge you to drop Mr. Plumley a brief email (even one line
would do, and would take all of 5 seconds to send) expressing your
displeasure that the espress bar was removed from the Commons and requesting
that it be returned as soon as possible.  His email address is:
andy.plumley at ucr.edu.  

 

Yes, I know there's a coffee kiosk near us, outside the Administration Bldg.
(or whatever the hell it's now being used for), and like many of you I do
patronize it on a fairly regular basis, buying a cappuccino and bringing it
back to my office.  But the kiosk doesn't address the need for something
that at least approximates a 'public space' (I realize that's a dirty word
these days in the last stages of advanced capitalism, with its privatization
of just about everything) where one can escape the solitary confines of
one's designated 'hole' (i.e., office) and briefly mingle and converse with
others (whether students or colleagues) over suitable restorative
refreshment.  

 

It's true that sending an email to Mr. Plumley will not help save the whales
or slow global warming or stop the takeover of the U.S. Supreme Court by
right-wing ideologues.  But it's a small and simple step each of us can take
to try to rectify a small and simple problem in our immediate work-place
environs - and best of all, it's a step that (assuming a critical mass of
people taking it) has a real chance of achieving its desired ends.  The
return of the espresso bar to the Commons is only the tip of the iceberg
when we consider the problems with the campus from the broadest perspective,
but one has to begin somewhere - and where better than with a bracing cup of
java?!

 

Thank you for reading and giving serious consideration to this (admittedly
overlong) email.  Special thanks to those of you who write to Mr. Plumley
about this matter.  And an extra special thank you to those who "cc" me in
your email, or who drop me a separate note letting me know you sent one.
Having a realistic estimate of the number of people who requested the return
of the espresso bar will help me in any future correspondence I might have
with Mr. P. (or his handlers).  I'd like to think that I'm not just pushing
my own pet peeve here but that I'm speaking for many of my colleagues in
this matter.

 

Cheers (and Happy 2008),

 

Carole

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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