Campus surviving first semester without free coffee

For the first time in over seven years, Waynesburg University’s Eberly Library entered a Fall semester without a coffee bar.

Last semester, to put more funding towards other endeavors, Student Senate decided to no longer fund the coffee bar.

The coffee bar was estimated to have taken up over half the Senate’s budget. Student Senate president Nick Cordova, a political science major with a history minor, said that because Student Senate is no longer funding the coffee bar, a lot of other opportunities have opened up.

“I would say that the Student Senate actually benefitted greatly from the elimination of the coffee bar, mainly because it freed up a great deal of funds to be spent on the students in other areas,” Cordova said. “We were actually able to expand our budget for events to the point where it’s actually eight times [greater than] what it was at this point last year.”

Cordova said that, as a result of having more room to spend, other events, such as harvest fest, and academic speakers coming to campus, will now be on display for the benefit of students.

Because Cordova was studying abroad at Oxford University last spring, he was not on campus when the process of eliminating the coffee bar was in the works. Vince Wise, who graduated this past spring, was academic vice president of Student Senate who was in charge of the coffee bar committee. Wise was one of the main proponents no longer funding the coffee bar.

“The real question of [the coffee bar] was cutting costs,” Wise said. “The coffee bar was the most expensive thing we did as a Student Senate.”

Wise spent most of his senior year trying to cut costs by removing non-essentials; such as cups. Late in the Spring semester, Wise suggested that the best course of action would be to remove the coffee to be able to spend in other areas.

In early April, Student Senate passed a bill to remove the coffee bar at the end of the school year with an 8-5 vote.

For Janet Virgili, student assistant coordinator at Eberly Library, one of the concerns about eliminating the coffee bar was how it would affect the overall atmosphere of the study areas in the lower level.

“I thought [Student Senate] should have given the students a chance to come up with a solution…to try, rather than to just drop it,” Virgili said. “I was really alarmed… because I was afraid of not having the students coming back to the coffee bar lounge to study. That was always nice to go down and see a roomful of students studying, and I didn’t want that to go away.”

Virgili said that she has not seen a drastic difference in atmosphere.

“So far, I still see a lot of students coming in and studying,” she said. “It’s still about the same. I haven’t heard anyone complain about [the coffee bar being gone] but I know [the students] miss it.”

Tessa Masula, a junior secondary English literature major, was one student who was disappointed with the removal of the coffee bar.

“I was outraged,” Masula said. “Definitely outraged. Coffee is super important, and sometimes our Keurigs break, or we don’t go to [Benedum Dining Hall]. So it was always good to know that there was some form of caffeine in the library.”

Masula feels that students should have had more of a say in the matter.

“I felt like there was very little student input, and that maybe some sort of vote or survey of some sort to see how students would feel…would have been helpful and made the procedure go a little more smoothly.”

Masula says that she has noticed a difference in the library’s atmosphere without the coffee bar.

“I think there’s [fewer] students in the library because they know they’re not going to be able to get coffee,” Masula said. “And so it’s not as ideal of a place to study anymore.”

Although, Wise himself is a coffee drinker and did not like that Student Senate had to make the decision, he stands by the removal.

“It’s like having to fire some people from a branch,” Wise said. “I’m sure no boss likes doing that, and I sure as heck love coffee, so I didn’t like doing what I did. But it was the right choice. I wasn’t there to do the job for the feelings; I was there to do the right job.”

Cordova said that the Senate is comfortable with the decision.

“[The Coffee Bar] is still jokingly referred to from time-to-time,” Cordova said. “But at this point, we like to say that ‘that’s water under the bridge.’ We recognize that it was a contentious issue when it happened, but I think we’ve gotten to the point where we’ve accepted the outcome and moved on, which is the best thing to do in my opinion.”