Coffeehouse changes hands

This year the East Campus Coffeehouse, run since its inception by residential group SHARE, will have new management: the Duke University Union.

The East Campus Coffeehouse lies dark and silent this fall, awaiting the completion of a stalled renovation project that physically mimics the administrative renovation taking place within. Run since its inception by residential group SHARE, this year the Coffeehouse will have new management: the Duke University Union.

The Office of Student Activities and Facilities received complaints from various students and student groups involved with the venue regarding management of the Coffeehouse and decided in late Spring 2004 to restructure its leadership. The changes left the Coffeehouse’s prior management feeling bypassed and excluded.

According to an e-mail from Gregg Heinselman, director of student activities and facilities, Coffeehouse management was asked last spring to give an account of its operations and a plan for self-improvement.

“The Office of Student Activities and Facilities was receiving complaints regarding the operation of the Coffeehouse space by individual students and student organizations... ranging from poor promotion of programmed events to inconsistent hours of operation and inconsistent student staffing,” Heinselman wrote.

Although most student-run organizations on campus can claim a liberal degree of bureaucratic autonomy, in the end, the vast majority answer to OSAF. When they neglect to answer, funding and even the right to self-management can quickly disappear.

After OSAF contacted then-manager John Haubenreich, Trinity ’04, and received no response, Heinselman approached the Union to see if it had interest in taking up operation of the space. Last year’s Union president, Jonathan Bigelow, approved of the idea and set up a meeting with the Coffeehouse’s former management to discuss the changes.

Although details of the exact changes to be executed this year are still under discussion within the Union, a renovation project has already begun that could keep the Coffeehouse doors closed as late as Thanksgiving.

Senior and four-year Coffeehouse employee Sarah Ogburn, who had been slated as this year’s new manager before the Union changes, said she had no recollection of any meetings last year between former management and the Union at which anything more than the possibility of collaborating on programming was discussed.

“I have never been dealt with so incredibly rudely in my life,” she said. “When I went in to turn in my work-study papers, they just laughed at me and said you’d better go to the work-study fair.”

She said this incident was her first knowledge of the fact that the Coffeehouse would be changing hands. She said more than 200 freshmen had signed up to be involved this year, and she had already developed a plan of action to address last year’s students’ concerns.

Many of those concerns, said Ogburn and other long-time employees, had long been out of student hands. For example, Coffeehouse management contacted the Facilities Management Department near fall break last year to repair a short in a lighting rig but received no response until late spring, at which point they were told they were on a list, and that the issue could take months more to address. The shorted rig halted programming for nearly two and a half months.

Yet the biggest concern of former Coffeehouse employees is the change in atmosphere—both physical and philosophical—they fear has already begun.

Senior Kevin Parker, current Union president, said plans to paint over the Coffeehouse’s idiosyncratic murals are not concrete, but past patrons have expressed outrage over the thought of losing a piece of the venue’s history.

Indoor smoking however, will definitely have to go, as the Union can only support only venues welcoming to all students, and smoking, former Coffeehouse employees have been told, is not welcoming to all.

Parker said coordinating with “groups that have been [at the Coffeehouse] in the past” will be a significant factor in the Union’s restructuring of the venue.

Senior Andy Kay, who will coordinate the Union’s share of programming at the Coffeehouse, said he is equally eager to bridge the gap between the past Coffeehouse ambiance and the restrictions required for Union endorsement.

“[The Coffeehouse] has always been—and I think it always should be—an alternative place on campus,” he said. “I think [Union and OSAF staff] do understand that it’s in the best interest of the Coffeehouse to preserve the feel of the Coffeehouse, but still keep things in working order.”