I don’t care about the Architecture Café. Maybe I’m a traitor and you hate me and I’m completely wrong, but at least I’m honest. All the protesting and rallies meant little to me even after I found out the café was the only student-run food spot on campus. I understand that the message goes deeper than “We want a place to buy coffee,” but whatever that message is was drowned out by the ever present “Save the Arch Caf” theme on fliers and posters scattered around the campus. Fiery words like “McGill students against administrative silence” would have been more poignant. Can you imagine that slogan blazing red and glorious, splashed across giant banners, marched through the main gates and right up to the front of Leacock?
To me, the Architecture Café never felt like something that was run by students. It felt like just another place on campus where you couldn’t use debit or credit and that rejected meal plan cards, much like all the restaurants on the second floor of the Shatner Building. In fact, any of those places could easily have been moved to where the Architecture Café was and I would have barely noticed. I find it hard to be sympathetic to the cause because if students want a place where they can get food from a student-run business, they should try their own kitchens. I hear that’s got some good stuff!
Maybe I’m just bitter. Maybe I’m a hater and a jerk and have no compassion for the efforts of my fellow students and friends. I never have cash and don’t like coffee and the one time I got food there the Jamaican patty was cold. But I don’t want to belittle the efforts of my fellow McGill students. I am in awe of their passion, determination, and knowledge of the situation.
However, most people see the campaign to save the café as simply an attempt to save a café, and one that many of them probably didn’t—and still don’t—even know the location of. The closure is being used as a screen on which students can project any other problems they may have with the administration. The café became an all-important cause only when it became a popular cause.
In the end, the entire thing is about money. McGill won’t release the financial figures. They didn’t take students’ ideas into consideration. They simply disregarded what the students tried to do. It was learning about the background behind the struggl that appalled me, not the actual café closure. If more attention had been given to the secretive way in which the administration handled things, I believe more students would have vocalized their support.
If this truly is the end of the Architecture Café, it will be a martyr in the continuing struggle between students and administration when it comes to food services at McGill: a battle that has raged since at least my first year at McGill. Fare thee well, Architecture Café. May your sacrifice show the administration that students actually do care, and are smarter than the administration would prefer to think. And what could possibly scare them more?
