As of March 4, the Bastille student restaurant will be closed during weekends. The cause: falling profits and high personnel costs. The rest of UT catering is also being evaluated. A reorganization plan is in the works, to be completed before the summer holidays.
Last August a devastating report on UT catering was published by Hospitality Consultants. Financial management of the caterer was insufficient in 2004 and the years prior to that, leading to structural budget deficits. The executive board responded by appointing an interim manager to get the organization back in shape. Meanwhile, a project group is working to develop a new concept for catering facilities on campus.
Last Tuesday, Executive Board Member Kees van Ast, informed the university council about the closing of the student restaurant on weekends. `This is one of the soft measures,' he said, `in the sense that this is relatively easy to execute. I am also expecting a reorganization plan to be drafted before summer.'
Over the past months, the cash registers tracked the number of visitors to the student restaurant. During weekends, that turned out to be an average of 106 people, only 34 of whom are students. The other 72 visitors are mostly from outside the university. Bart Dirne, general manager of UT catering: `On weekdays, about four hundred people come to get a hot meal. That is very different from the weekends.' Because the student restaurant is subsidized and has long required additional funding, the Executive Board had had enough. Van Ast: `You can't keep sponsoring people who have no connection to the UT.' Dirne: `Closing on weekends saves 35,000 euros.' Dirne blames the lack of customers on the fact that most students leave the campus on weekends.
The Student Union regrets the decision. `But we understand that this was financially the right thing to do. There simply aren't enough students using the restaurant,' according to board member Janine Rebel. `Obviously we are sad to see a student facility go, so we will have to consider whether other dinner facilities can be arranged for students on campus.' So the dynamic Bastille, as the Union is fond of calling its building, is not that dynamic after all?
Trans. Jeroen Latour
