Recently there has been much talk of the Levee going “dry.” The thought of our sole on-campus watering hole morphing into some other form doesn’t seem to be much of an issue to most students on campus. This is partially due to the fact that over half the population living on campus is under the legal drinking age. As for those that are legal, there seems to be far more interesting places to get their suds. If the Levee had to stand on its own, without university backing, it would either fold or find a way to become competitive with the bars in town. As it stands, it is another fine example of how zero-competition on campus benefits no one.
Fairfield is just about all sewn up by big corporate contracts including a rather lucrative and far-reaching pact with Sodexho. Sodexho runs the dining hall, The Stag, The Levee, and the snack kiosks. It’s not hard to notice that the same oft-disdainful food found in the dining hall is gussied up and served at The Stag or at one of the kiosks.
The facts are that you eat Sodexho here on campus whether you like it or not. The enjoyment of an actual “diner” experience is lost on patrons of The Stag. It runs basically like a second cafeteria with slightly better and pricier food. If students had an independent diner within close distance that accepted their “Stag Bucks” it’s likely that The Stag would become irrelevant if it remained in its present form. Competition would force it to provide better service at lower costs to students. For a university with such a touted business school the concept of competition seems lost.
The Stag and The Levee are in the same boat. In-town bars offer a welcome change of pace from campus life. These bars also have to find ways to pull in patrons week after week. Be it specials, prices, promotions, lax ID policies, or any number of business tools that they employ to compete in competitive market with rivals. If customers stop coming, they lose money and eventually go out of business. If The Levee stops drawing people, it falls back on its university sponsorship and along with Sodexho a different unit is brought in. So, instead of a Sodexho bar named the Levee it becomes a Sodexho coffee shop or a Sodexho pizza place of a different name. Essentially it’s a university “state owned” enterprise valued by few, and unlike the dining hall or to a lesser extent The Stag, considered essential by none.
I suggest instead that Sodexho be limited in terms of what it can run and that Stag Bucks begin to mean more. With a highly desirable audience of young people and a prime location, a company could create a bar that caters to university students, a coffee shop like Starbucks, or a real diner.
The new tenant would pay the university rent thus turning this property into a revenue generator. The key facts are that competition would force whoever takes up shop to fine-tune their products and setting to meet the needs of the students. The university should want the Levee to make the most money possible and it should want what is best for the students. Let the market decide what works and break the stranglehold of Sodexho.
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