From evans@cs.virginia.edu Tue Feb 18 16:25:40 2003 Date: Sat, 8 Feb 2003 08:46:33 -0500 (EST) From: David Evans To: doland-vicki@aramark.com cc: chardwick@gailforceinc.com, albert-debbie@aramark.com Subject: UVa Poolside Cafe Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Dear Ms. Doland, I'm writing to inform you of a very disturbing incident that took place at the Poolside Cafe, a coffee shop that is operated by ARAMARK inside a intramural atheletic building on the grounds of the University of Virginia. I am a professor at the University of Virginia. On February 7, I took my class of about 30 students to the Poolside Cafe. I frequently take my classes out of the classroom, since I find students are better engaged and learn more when their surroundings changed. I have taken similar groups of students on many occasions to the Starbucks that is outside the University grounds, and never had any complaints --- in fact, they welcome us, and sometimes offer the students free drinks, even though (unlike the Poolside Cafe) they are usually full of customers when we arrive. We arrived at the Poolside Cafe around 2:15, a time when it is always empty, as it was on February 7th. Some of the students lined up patiently to buy coffees and expensive smoothie drinks from the Cafe; others sat at the tables in the Cafe and began working on their assignment. None of the students did anything that would have been inappropriate at a library (other than drinking coffee, depending on the library). I went around the tables of students and helped them work on their assignment. At no time were all of the tables at the Cafe full, and my students did nothing at all improper while they were there. Your representative who was working at the cash register and preparing drinks, apparently was upset to have her usual afternoon quiet time disturbed by having actual customers to serve, and called her manager to complain. Her manager apparently agreed that having customers come into a cafe and order coffee was unusual, and called the UVa Intramural/Recreational Office who is responsible for the building in which the Cafe is located and stated that there was an "emergency" at the Cafe and demanded that he remove us. A representive from their office, Mark Leonida, came to the coffee shop, accosted me and told us to leave, and threatened to send the police if we didn't. This was the first I heard of there being a problem; no one from the Cafe asked me anything or spoke directly with me. We decided to stay, since I believed the campus police would understand their role in the University community better than the ARAMARK workers. The police never arrived (I learned later that the UVa representative never called them), and the students continued to work on their assignments, and buy and drink more coffee and smoothie drinks. I am a firm believer in the right of a business to choose who they want to serve (except in ways that violate national discrimination laws) and to do what they want with privately owned property. If you were a normal business, I would find your decision to ask a large group of paying, well-behaved customers to leave to be bizarre and misguided, but not offensive enough to merit a complaint letter. However, by operating in a University owned building on the grounds a public University, you become a part of the University community. As such, I believe you have a responsbility to futher the goals of the University and to treat students and faculty decently so long as it does not interfere with your business. Your employees should be delighted to have faculty bring groups of students to your Cafe, and have a rare opportunity to make a positive contribution to the academic life of the University. You should be especially delighted when those students and faculty also buy drinks from your Cafe. Its up to you to decide how you want to address the bad business decisions your employees have made and their mistreatment of paying customers. As continuing members of the University community, however, you do have a duty to teach and convince your employees who work on University grounds operations that they have a responsibility to the University's mission in addition to your business. Then maybe next time a professor brings a group of students into one of your eating establishments, your employees will treat them as valued customers and community members instead of as criminals who need to be removed. Sincerely, David Evans evans@virginia.edu http://www.cs.virginia.edu/evans 434 982 2218 Assistant Professor of Computer Science University of Virginia