News

Coke is it!

Coca-Cola pouring $500,000 into this University. But will students ever see any of it? The administration is doing it's best to keep it away from us even though we're the ones actually drinking the malted battery acid.

With the demise of the cold war and capitalism left to run amok, every God-fearing consumer on this great planet must dig deep down into the cockles of their hearts (and maybe even as far down as their colon) and ask themselves one essential question that will determine their place in the New World Order.

Coke or Pepsi?

Although it may seem a ridiculous question, think about it for a minute. They are both multinational, multibillion-dollar corporations, and fiercely competitive. Back in the 80s, the heydays of New Coke, The Pepsi Challenge, Max Headroom and Michael Jackson flambe, competition between them was referred to in the media as the "cola wars," and for good reason. There is so much money at stake, the conflicts between the two are probably just as deep-seated and well funded as any disputes between global governments.

Of course it would seem natural to assume that this game of corporate Risk is fought and won in the dark conference rooms of skyscraper penthouses and has little to do with you. You'd be wrong. The University of Oregon recently served as the turf that the two superpowers fought an intense bidding war over. Coke emerged victorious, gaining the right to be the sole supplier of vending machines on this campus. But even though Coke gained a multimillion-dollar vending contract, many say the real winner in this bidding war is the University of Oregon. Knowing full well what was at stake for the soft drink companies, the U of O made sure that it was no pawn.

Susan Racette, Associate Director/Business Manager for the EMU, who negotiated the vending contract with Coke, aggressively pursued Coca-Cola making sure that if the University was gong to give them millions of dollars worth of business that it would get something in return. Before putting a contract proposal together for Pepsi and Coke, Racette did some research.

"I had recently been in contact with some of the other campuses around the United States and in the Pac-10 and had learned that if they put a requirement that they not only share income, but provide some other in-kind support, that you are likely to get a more generous package offered back," she said.

And indeed she did. A major reason why Coke was chosen over Pepsi was the fact that they took the suggestion to provide "in-kind support" to heart.

"We gave a wide variety of the examples in the proposal of in-kind support, and I must say that I never dreamed that we would get quiet so generous an offer as we did from Coke," Racette said. Coke has pledged over $100,000 of in-kind support to various University programs every year for the length of its five-year contract - more than four times what Pepsi offered.

The $100,000 per year Coke is pledging in support of University program breaks down as follows: $25,000 will go to the Oregon Bach Festival, $1,200 for the College Bowl (College Bowl? One wonders who was in the right place at the right time to wrangle that), $10,000 to the Anniversary Fund, $10,000 for Housing, $15,000 for University scholarships, $2,000 in "product donation" (programs can fill out a request form for Coke to provide cases of soda and chips when they hold an event) and, drum roll please, $35,800 in a "discretionary fund," the monies from which will be determined by a cabal of University administrators made up of Weston Morill, Dean of the Office of Student Life, Dusty Miller, EMU Administrator and Dan Williams, UO Vice President.

While the official line is that it was ultimately Coke's decision where to apportion the money, it's not hard to imagine several administrative agendas at work here. It seems doubtful that a large corporation would walk in and donate $50,000 to our fiscally ailing Housing department without some bureaucratic arm-twisting being involved. It would seem logical that if students are the ones who Coke is going to sell all their products to, then they are the ones who should benefit directly from the in-kind support, not the administration. While I'm told the Arvo Part performance a few years ago was nothing short of transcendent, it's doubtful that funneling $25,000 to the Oregon Bach Festival, an already well-funded and high profile event, will benefit anyone but Coke and the Administration, especially when the average student doesn't know a fugue from the Frug.

Many student government leaders echoed similar sentiments about the way Coke and the administration doled out the in-kind support in this you-scratch-my-back sort of way.

"I would have liked to see more money go into student activities in general," Student Senator Jenna Wasson said. Wasson also serves as student representative on the EMU board under Dusty Miller. Unfortunately, most of the money has already been set aside for specific purposes, and this is unlikely to change. That doesn't mean that there is no way to get more money for students. The annual $35,800 in discretionary funds are still up for grabs.

"The $35,800 in discretionary funds - we saw that and it perked our ears up for getting some pet projects we want to get done," ASUO President Bill Miner said. Miner has his eyes on the Coke money because he wants to help use it to establish a $10,000 per year fund to help bring more speakers to campus. This idea also has growing support form the rest of student government, as Wasson also expressed her support for the speaker's fund idea, saying that she though it would benefit all students.

However, it should be pointed out that the fact that Miner is actively soliciting money from a large multinational corporation to establish this speaker's fund could be seen as something of an about face considering some of his previously stated views about corporate donations to the University. Both Miner, and ASUO Vice President Bill Unger in particular, have been critical of corporate donations in the past, especially of Nike's influence on the campus. According to Miner, when a large corporation makes a donation to the University they may influence the curriculum in ways that are unhealthy, specifically when that corporation's practices are questionable. Miner cites how Nike's imprint is all over the business school, yet business students never hear from labor representatives about their exploitative practice of paying third-world children to make their shoes.

But Miner sees the money from Coke as an altogether different mater. "Of course we had concerns, as far as this contributions was from a corporation, but it was an incentive to have a product within the University and we thought that was quite all right," he said. Even though he also stated that he was concerned about Coke's problems with apartheid some years ago, when the company refused to divest their holding in South Africa despite pressure to boycott the separatist government, Miner sees no problem in seeking Coke money for the speaker's fund because in this case the motivation for their donation within the context of their contract is strictly within the context of their contract is strictly economic. "The fact that we are getting a product out of it, that's where the line is drawn," Miner said.

Although, unfortunately for Miner, it will be at least a year before he can see any of the discretionary money going towards a speaker's fund. Even though it is early in the school year, the money in the discretionary fund is disappearing faster than the baby tooth my sister put in that Coke bottle for her junior high science project. According to Racette, the coke contract came together this summer at almost exactly the same time that the EMU began to realize that the courtyard project was going to cost more than the student fees that had been allocated for it. Of this year's discretionary fund, $30,000 has already been allocated to help alleviate the rising cost of the courtyard renovation. Considering the poor planning of the courtyard project, the Coke contract is certainly fortuitous. Matt Scotten last year's ASUO President, who conceived the courtyard project, only asked for $365,000 to fund the project. According to Miner, when he took office this year he learned that many of the estimates Scotten received were more than that amount, some as high as $485,000, indicating that it was likely the project was going to go over budget. By then, the project had already been railroaded through. Scotten had graduated and long gone, leaving the EMU and this year's student government to pick up the dropped ball. If the Coke money wasn't coming through, students might have been further burdened by a project that so far has been the source of many campus woes.

But the money is coming though, luckily for everyone. A few minor concerns aside, Coke's $500,000 donation to the University looks to be a very positive thin, and everyone is generally optimistic. "I think it's a great thing," Wasson said. "Before when we had a vending contract we didn't get all of these benefits like this." Susan Racette in the EMU agrees: "This is a new thing happening on campus. To me it's really a good exciting thing." She is also open to the idea of finding a way to better utilize the discretionary money. "Perhaps maybe they need to open up the process in the future on what to do with the discretionary funds," she said. So, it looks as if everyone may not get what they want, but in the long run this money will make a lot of people happy.

This only leaves one issue unresolved: What about the legions of Pepsi drinkers on campus? Any fool knows that Mr. Pibb and Surge are poor charlatans when comes to the refined palette of your average Dr. Pepper or Mountain Dew drinker! Well, you can still get Pepsi in fountain drinks on campus, but for the most part you'll just have to take Coke's money and run. But don't worry, the cola wars rage on. Maybe five years from now when the Coke contract is up for renewal, Pepsi will take a cue form the battle they lost this summer and reevaluate their eleemosynary tendencies.

Mark Hemingway, a Senior majoring in Journalism, is Associate Editor of the Oregon Commentator