The price of the cost per hour of Bon Appetite keeping Lopata open is what is deemed a market inefficiency (Here listed as a market inefficiency, because Bon Appetite has a monopoly on the dining services, and thus creates the market, and therein the market inefficiencies, with the obvious irrelevant exception of Subway’s presence on campus.), that was not solved when they last had the chance to do so.

In the addition of services, those services added should have cured the current ailments of the business model currently in place. I.e. since the dining services new, prior to the opening of the duc and the new facilities on the South 40, that the cost of keeping Lopata open were sufficiently high that they did not believe it feasible to do so, they have a responsibility to present and execute additions to their services in a manner that cures that ail rather than in a manner that simply presents for the students new services rather than better services. Since I first ate food prepared by Bon Appetite the service has decreased dramatically as it concerns the administrative aspect of that category, while the number of services has continued to increase.

What the students are here being presented is a simple, shameless, slight of hand producing for them new services without curing the old services, and, there in perpetuating a business model that only creates barriers to adequate service being provided to those students they have a responsibility and stated goal of providing food for.

That there is currently a economic recession on going is irrelevant to their ability to claim some form of abatement from the necessity to produce for students that which they said they would do. That they are unable to create for students food at cost because there is a market event currently on going is a sign of their poor preparation for this kind of event (poor preparation mirrored by the school’s endowment investments), that given its regularity (once every twenty or thirty years since modern markets) should be accounted for.

The editorial board has produced an editorial, essentially stating, that students have an obligation not to forget how good they have it. Let us not forget that tuition is $37,800 (67th highest for the 2008-2009 school year, and its only going to get higher from there.) per student per year, the college of arts and sciences has 3,700+ students alone, (forget scholarships for the present discussion, due to the fact that those monies are still being collected by the school and that only the source of the money is different), and that the students enrolled are the best students the school could wish for (let citizens not fear their government, let their government fear them, etc.).

If they are unable to provide for students given the allocation of the aforementioned tuition given to them for the provision of services by the university, then the school has a responsibility to its students to replace bon appetite with a company that can produce food at the given allowance without the gaps in services that the previously stated tuition should not allow for.

That the school requests so much of the students and their respective families economically, is in no way unacceptable to me, so long as those monies are used responsibly, however, this very issue shows the slight of hand tricks employed by various groups (also present in the architecturally designs of the buildings that have sprung up over the past handful of years) charged with providing for the students services that should be greatly expanded in some areas.

In drafting, the first rule given to the student is ‘form follows function’, the kind of ‘ooo’ and ‘aww ‘effect that dining services is producing is at the very heart of the problems facing the university as it attempts to move itself into the circle in which it belongs. I.e., within the top ten, if not the top five, were the resources (students, professors, facilities, opportunities, etc.) adequately and properly consumed and dispensed by the administrators currently in charge of the university.

The services offered at WUSTL by Bon Appetite are nowhere near unrivalled, they are not at all times, or for that matter, even mostly superb, and the administrators in charge of food services have shown themselves to be further entrenching flaws within their business models as they add on services rather than improving the service those services are attached to, when given the opportunity to eradicate and dispel them from their services provided to WUSTL students.

The editorial position of this newspaper is one that celebrates mediocrity, the kind that is as hollow and (as disappointing as it is to those of us truly concerned with the school, and its future), prevalent as the walls of the new dorms, and the kind that holds back rather than pushes forward positive change.

Respectfully Submitted,
Patrick S. Seaworth