It gives us no joy to say it, but it is time to let the Arbor Room go.
These pages have lately been lively with letters and editorials debating the unfortunate end of the beloved Hart House eatery and the fraught choice of how to replace the food service in that space. The outpouring of feeling on this issue has been remarkable, and we have tried to reflect these divergent views in the Varsity Comment section. Though the closure of the Arbor Room is a sad end to an era, the case for the status quo has not been made convincingly.
Hart House must accept a good deal of the blame for the closure’s poor reception among students. The decision to close the Arbor was publicized abruptly and without sufficient detail about the choice and how it was made. The Hart House Board of Stewards appeared unprepared for the backlash, and when it came, responded to it unsympathetically.
The backlash was none too graceful either. The proponents of keeping the Arbor Room food service open as-is raised a litany of protests against the scheme, only some of which held water. The cries of an impending “McHart House” or the spectre of a Tim Horton’s downstairs were attention-grabbing but not supported by fact. Ten unionized employees were never at risk of losing their jobs, but many observers mistakenly thought they were; the food service area of the Arbor may change, but the space itself, popular as a meeting place and as a venue for music and other performances, was not at risk of closure. There are legitimate concerns to be raised about the Arbor’s closure, but they weren’t the ones being voiced the loudest.
The Students’ Administrative Council collected an impressive 8,000 signatures in an online petition asking Hart House to reconsider, and that number is nothing to sneeze at. But the petition itself spoke of the “elimination of good unionized jobs,” which made it sound like the Arbor workers were going to be thrown out into the street. This is simply not the case: the employees are to be relocated to other jobs on campus, as U of T’s collective bargain with CUPE requires. Certainly this will be disruptive for them, and that is unfortunate, but the loss of union jobs was a red herring.
SAC and the Graduate Students’ Union’s vigorous protest of the closure did make some good points: there is already a dearth of kosher and halal food available on campus, and certainly the continuing Sodexification of U of T is nothing to be applauded (if, that is, food service multinational Sodexho is chosen to run the new Arbor Room).
But the fact remains: the Arbor Room lost money from day one, and every dollar Hart House spends propping up the cafeteria’s bottom line is a dollar that could be better spent on services and programming for students. No one has yet proved the singular, irreplaceable preciousness of the Arbor Room that would be necessary to continue subsidizing it. The food is good, sure, but the prices are no bargain, and though the Arbor Room is nominally “independent” now, it stocks most of the same brand-name, mass-market products you’d find a block away in the Sodexho-run Robarts Library cafeteria.
If Hart House’s Board of Stewards break any of their many pledges about the new Arbor Room-there is now a list of 13 criteria which a prospective company must meet to be considered for the contract-then The Varsity will be first in line to skewer them for their perfidy. But it’s time to put the beloved but financially crippled Arbor Room out to pasture.
