By Dessa Bayrock (The Cascade) – Email
Print Edition: October 31, 2012
I’ve been thinking all semester about how awesome AfterMath is. UFV has had a student pub on campus for years and years, but this is only the second year in its current form.
Despite the fact that it always seems to be hopping, SUS announced this month that AfterMath has hit its threshold deficit of $60,000 and its future is in jeopardy.
It’s only slated for $80,000 total for the entire 2012/2013 school year, so the fact that it’s run through 75 per cent of that budget barely halfway through the fall semester is worrisome to say the least.
Is there a possibility that AfterMath will close? Definitely. Where will that leave us? Will we be struck with Sodexo? Will we have a pub at all, or will students have to make a trek to (the far more pricey) Finnegan’s? The fact of the matter is SUS just doesn’t have the money to throw at this. Unless students come up with a better idea, we may very well be stuck with whatever we’re handed.
I’m not going to lie; Casey’s used to suck. It sucked hard, and in all sorts of ways. I can count on one hand the number of times I’d eaten at the campus pub when it was still called Casey’s, and there are many reasons why. The service was bad. The food was bad. The menu was bad. The poutine was bad. The staff was stand-offish. The atmosphere was gloomy and weird.
But then there was the magical evolution into AfterMath Socia1hou5e, and I’ve got to tell you – I love it, inexplicable numerical components and all.
Let me tell you a story. It was about a month ago, and I had planned my day out badly and only left 10 minutes to get from one class to another and somehow feed myself on the way. Usually I pack a lunch; this fateful day, I failed to remember my Tupperware. I was facing a four-hour lecture on an empty stomach and I was not pleased with life.
On gut instinct, I stopped by AfterMath.
“I have 10 minutes to get to class, and I need food,” I told the guy behind the counter.
Two minutes later I had a Styrofoam box in my hand. It cost me $6. I was early for class, and I was eating a massive portion of some kind of salsa chicken rice concoction. Everyone. Was. Jealous. More importantly, I wasn’t hungry. More importantly, AfterMath had provided for me. AfterMath had my back.
We’ve got a good thing going here, and we should do everything we can to keep it around.
It’s no secret that under this management, and with this chef in the kitchen, and with this set of students as waiters and bartends, AfterMath is a completely new pub. It had a facelift, and boy, did it ever need one. I don’t think I’ve bought lunch from the cafeteria once this semester, and it’s because the food at AfterMath is both better and cheaper. There is simply no contest.
But while we’re talking facts, the student pub on campus has never turned a profit. This was true of Casey’s, and it’s unfortunately true of AfterMath.
At first, the logical conclusion is to close AfterMath if it’s not making any money. If we’re going to sink money into it for no reason, then why keep it open?
It comes down to a simple distinction: AfterMath isn’t a business, it’s a service. It falls in the same category as the U-Pass and the health and dental plan as something that we, as students, are paying SUS to operate for us. Compared to other restaurants, AfterMath is hemorrhaging money and would have shut down years ago. But AfterMath is more than a restaurant; it’s a safe haven for students who need a place to study, chill out and get tequila before midterms. It is a necessary part of university life, and—if UFV intends to brand itself as a university—the pub had better stick around.
Right now, it’s far from an ideal situation. The space is narrow and cramped, and the kitchen is a repurposed concession stand; the menu is limited because a lot of the food has to be pre-cooked, and there isn’t room for more than 1.5 people to be working in the kitchen at any one time. This is part of the problem that moving to the still-unbuilt Student Union Building (SUB) will solve, but I don’t want to count that chicken before I know there’s even an egg. Right now we have what we have, and we make the best of it.
And you know what? They’ve done a spectacular job. I eat at AfterMath more often than I eat at home. I know there’s always somewhere I can go to get a quick bite or a long draft, and it’s a great venue for fundraisers, events, concerts – you name it.
It’s not making money, but that’s hardly news. At this point, it doesn’t matter whose fault it is. Pointing fingers isn’t going to help anyone.
I want to keep the pub open, you want to keep the pub open, SUS wants to keep the pub open. There shouldn’t really be any issue here, but I’ve been hearing people pick sides all week: Shane Potter versus AfterMath, SUS versus Brad Ross, the pub versus “The Man.” These are not real divides; we’re all on the same team.
There are two sides to this battle, but let me make this clear: none of us should be fighting each other.
This is us versus the funding. There are no other sides to this.
If we can find a way to pay for AfterMath to stay open, be that through reallocating funds, holding a referendum or generous donation, we win.
If we squabble like schoolchildren, point fingers and argue over who got us into this mess, we will get nowhere. The funding will win and we will lose. The pub will shut. You’ll be buying over-priced and badly-cooked grilled cheese at Sodexo before you can say PBR.
Nobody wants that, so can we please stop fighting each other?
The concept is so basic that even High School Musical can use it as a central theme: we’re all in this together.
It’s going to take more than putting our names to a petition to save AfterMath; it’s going to take a hard look at the numbers and some quick thinking. Most of all, it’s going to take teamwork.
The fact of the matter is that there are no evil people who have set out to deprive us of food and beer; the only people on SUS trying to shut AfterMath are the ones trying to be realistic about what it costs students to keep it open.
Because it is costing us, and we can’t just close our eyes and pretend it isn’t.
Believe it or not, SUS doesn’t just have $50,000 laying around that they can throw at this budget problem to make it go away. And unlike past SUS boards, they aren’t willing to steal that $50,000 from other projects (like the Health and Dental Plan or the U-Pass) to keep AfterMath running.
I cannot express how stupendously admirable this is.
Instead, they’re giving students the chance to see where their money is going.
If we can scrounge or raise $50,000, we can save the pub. But SUS is making sure we know exactly where that money’s coming from and how it will affect other services.
We asked for a more transparent SUS. It would be kind of stupid to complain now that we’re getting it.
Honestly, I don’t think AfterMath will close. Students or SUS will find a way, because nobody wants to be part of the SUS that shut the pub – and that applies to both board members and students.
