The financial ship is sinking, and Bon Appetit hopes the Rat can swim.

The Umrathskeller, Washington Univer-sity’s lone bar and grill, has cut back its Thursday night hours this year due to lack of revenue and patrons. Last semester, the Rat, as the Umrathskeller is commonly called, was open every Thursday night, but it will be open only three nights this semester: Feb. 13, March 13, and April 3 from 8 p.m. to midnight. These could be the last Rat Nights ever if attendance remains low.

Formerly, Thursday nights at the Rat were extremely popular with students. Two years ago, 200 to 300 students attended the Thursday night gatherings on average. Attendance has dropped steadily in the two years since Bon Appetit began counting visitors.

Greg Teator is the general manager of Bon Appetit, the company which operates the Rat. He recommended this semester’s changes to the university’s administration.

“There was one Rat Night last semester where we had two people with a total sale of $8,” said Teator. “Then, if you consider that you pay $16 an hour for a security guard and times that by four, plus a manager and an hourly associate and then multiply that over the course of 32 weeks… It adds up.”

Essentially, the Rat has become a sinkhole for money. Teator suggested location as a possible reason for this. The Rat is situated below the west end of Umrath Hall, just outside the doors of Mallinkrodt.

“We don’t have the street business like the typical bar would have,” he said. “The Rat is primarily for students that know where it is and that we have events.”

Another reason Teator offered is the size of the eligible drinking population at WU.

“When you compare [the Rat] to other campuses that have bars or a pub on their campus, it’s not heavily used,” said Teator. “Take a look at the age of authorized patrons that can drink beer; three quarters of your clientele is underage.”

Many upperclassmen have their own opinions on the causes of the Rat’s decline. Some blame the Rat’s increased monitoring of underage drinkers, while others fault the rise in price of beer.

“I honestly think that it is the school’s own fault,” said senior David Dantzler. “When you jack up the price of beer and decrease the size of the cups, of course that is going to upset people when for so long they are used to something different. So people started going elsewhere.”

Steve Hoffner, vice chancellor of students, approved Teator’s recommendation to limit the Rat’s hours. When asked about student complaints about beer prices and ID-checking, he acknowledged both issues.

According to Hoffner, the Missouri Liquor Control Commission sent representatives to the Rat five years ago to investigate a complaint about underage drinking. The complaint was supposedly made by a student. Underage drinkers were found and charges were filed against Marriott, the company that ran the Rat at that time.

After this, the Rat was more diligent about checking IDs and began referring students to the judicial administrator. Several students were fined $500.

Hoffner also admits that the beer sizes shrank but said they did so only to reduce binge drinking.

“The university began to take a hard look at how the Rat was operating and what we could do to address the concern of over-consumption of alcohol,” said Hoffner. “That resulted in the price increase and the reduction in the size of the cups.”

Hoffner also states plainly that underage drinking will never be an option.

“The culture of the university has changed,” he said. “There is less tolerance for underage drinking and much more focus on healthy and responsible behavior. We’re not going to turn that clock back, nor should we. We may try to again market it in the way it was originally intended-to an older crowd-but right now we’re not sure what the future holds.”

Upperclassmen may harbor opinions about the changes made to the Rat, but current freshmen Michelle Wang and Cynthia Ivy can only admit to never participating in a populated Rat Night.

“I remember when I came to visit, people suggested we go to the Rat,” said Wang. “They were like, ‘the Rat, its cool, definitely check it out.’ But it just doesn’t seem like anybody really knows about it this year. None of my friends ever suggest going there. It just seems kind of dead.”

Ivy shared this opinion.

“I guess it was the first month of school when we went down just to check out the whole place,” she said. “After that, we never went back again.”

Rat Night may be failing, but the Rat’s lunch business, which features a grill that serves up large portions and constant sporting events via satellite, remains successful. Typically, 200-250 people stop in for lunch each day.

The satellite system that provides those sporting events was just one attempt of many to draw crowds to Rat Nights. They tried DJ’s every night this past semester, advertisements in Student Life, bar specials, theme nights, appetizer discounts, and football weekend parties. Nothing seemed to work.

“I can’t tell you why people wouldn’t go there,” said Teator.

If participation continues to be low this semester, Rat Nights will be a thing of the past. Teator expects that next year the Rat will remain open for lunch and to be available to be rented out by student groups for a set cost.

“We’re going to open up every month to see if it is missed or not,” he said. “My gut feeling is, it’s not missed.”

Popularity: 1% [?]

 Print This Post

This entry was posted on Friday, January 31st, 2003 at 12:00 pm and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.