Petition does little to change espresso
cartās fate

By Reem Al-Omari
The Metropolitan

A Metro student has gathered 3,000 student signatures on a petition asking that Auraria extend the lease for Higher Grounds coffee cart or allow the business to operate on campus from a new location.

This summer, Auraria administrators decided to terminate the coffee cartās lease on Aug. 17 but changed their minds after students opposed the decision. The cartās owners now have until June 1998, when their lease was originally slated to expire, to take their operation elsewhere.

ćThis is about students being heard,ä said Mark Sedlacek, a Metro student who started the petition and has been collecting signatures since October.

Metroās Student Government Assembly and the Student Advisory Committee to the Auraria Board met Nov. 14 in the Tivoli to discuss the petition.

Dwayne Taylor, a member of SACABās food service subcommittee, explained that Auraria already decided to honor the full term of the lease and slammed the cartās owners for not bidding to renew their lease. Taylor said the petition misrepresents Aurariaās dealings with the cartās owners by placing all the blame on Auraria.

Although the cart has generated a lot of interest, the student government wonāt be doing much to change the situation, said student government President Karmin Trujillo.

Since this is an Auraria issue, not Metroās, it is best addressed by SACAB, which represents all three schools at Auraria, she said.

Barb Weiske, director of the Tivoli Student Union and Campus Auxiliaries, said Auraria decided to end the cartās lease this summer so it could find a vendor to run both the cafeteria inside the South Classroom and the coffee cart. Leah Johnson, co-owner of Higher Grounds, said she didnāt bid again because she didnāt have the money or knowledge to run both the cafeteria and cart.

ćIām not interested in that at all,ä Johnson said.
Bidders would have to shell out $50,000 up front to take over operation of the cart and cafeteria, she said.

Weiske offered the lease for both the cart and cafeteria to eliminate competition between the two and to attract a vendor that could offer a wider variety of food.

Weiske said moving Higher Grounds somewhere else on campus is not an option because Auraria has already chosen someone to take over the operation of the cart and the cafeteria. Weiske said the new vendor was picked out of seven bidders.