VIEWPOINT

Coke ‘theme park’ poses threat to University’s value system

Prof. Woodhouse

By Dr. Howard Woodhouse

I returned just recently from the University of Manitoba where an "exclusivity agreement" was signed a few years ago with Pepsi Cola.

The predominantly blue signs littering the U of M campus are just as ugly as "our" red and white ones, the sugar water is no better for one’s health, and the corporate monopoly over soft drinks equally stringent.

But there is no blinking message board at the U of M throwing up Pepsi logos, and the deal was allegedly worth $10 million over ten years – this for a university about the same size as the U of S. It should be remembered that the Coke deal with the U of S is worth only between $2 million and $2.5 million for the same time period.

So when I read the "backgrounder" ("Facts offered on U of S agreement with Coke," On Campus News, April 21, p.2), that "Coca-Cola made the offer seen as providing the most benefit to the U of S", I realised they were describing mere appearance rather than reality. After all, who has actually seen these "benefits" to the U of S?

A systematic refusal to acknowledge that the campus is being transformed into a Coke theme park is evident throughout the backgrounder. They claim, for example, that "the company’s advertising presence on campus has not increased substantially since the agreement," but then contradict this with the following statement: "additional vending machines and recycling containers have recently been added to meet increased demand ..." In their zeal for the deal, the authors of the backgrounder abandon elementary logic by denying what they then assert; namely, that there are more Coke machines and advertising logos on campus than there were two years ago.

The most sinister aspect of the backgrounder, however, is the ease with which it abandons the distinctive values of the University in favour of those of the corporate market.

In place of the openness required for the advancement and dissemination of shared knowledge, the backgrounder emphasises the need "to protect the company’s competitive position in the marketplace."

In other words, the U of S’s responsibility is now to enable Coke to compete in the global marketplace by keeping secret the details of the deal, and persuading our "clients" (i.e students) to consume huge amounts of their "product." Otherwise, the company’s overriding goal of maximising private money profits will suffer.

The backgrounder refuses to acknowledge that this corporate value program is a threat to the University. It claims, for example, that the Coke deal "does not provide opportunity for the corporation to influence the University’s mandated activities of research, teaching, and community service."

Yet its own advocacy of the value of corporate secrecy in place of the openness required for the advancement and dissemination of shared knowledge belies this claim, as does both its defence of Coke’s use of the University to maximise private money profits and its inability to distinguish between appearance and reality.

The backgrounder remains blind to the fact that the value program of the corporate market is subordinating all of the University’s distinctive activities to its overriding goal of private profit maximisation. This blindness is indicative of a lack of rational, critical thought and of a consequent disdain for the traditions of the University itself.

Woodhouse is a professor in the Department of Educational Foundations.