The unbroken drought
“This will be your student bar”, and it will be “open and fully functional by O-Week 2016”. But those of you who took an O-Week host tour last week, or otherwise made it to level one of Union House, will have seen a locked staging area for showbags, rather than a bustling hub of activity that should have been enjoying its first week.
This article looks at what happened, what’s stopped this bar from becoming a student haunt (and perhaps a money spinner for the student union?), and what will happen next.
(We swear the lock in the picture above was actually on the door of the space; we didn’t put it there just to get a great accompanying photo!)
The space on the first floor of Union House looking out to North Court has been a student space—usually a student drinking space—for a very long time. One student graduating in 1997 remembered “good vibes, good times” from a venue “welcoming to all students”; rather than the “drinking hole, or crêpe hole” that it later became. Farrago in 1990 reported that students would “no longer be forced to leave campus” in search of alcohol, with the space being run by the student union as a bar from the first week of that year.
For the past decade or so, the bar has been leased to a tenant which has run it on a commercial basis. (The length of the lease for that space was significantly longer than of any other in the building, for reasons that are spoken of in hushed voices, but no-one actually appears to know.) For a while, this was Inu, which then became Harajuku Crepes (HJC); what is broadly agreed was that the bar’s one advantage (central location) did not weigh well against its many disadvantages (price, décor, atmosphere, and every other element one might associate with a public house).
In 2015, light at the end of the tunnel: HJC surrendered its lease of the space to MU Student Union Ltd (the entity which is responsible for managing Union House), and the thought was that the separate University of Melbourne Student Union (UMSU, the people in the purple) might directly manage a bar there.
Read the box to the right that explains the difference between University of Melbourne Student Union (UMSU) and MU Student Union Ltd (MUSUL). We’ll wait.
UMSU, MUSUL, GSA, WTF?
The names “University of Melbourne” and “Melbourne University” are often used interchangably — which raises the question, does this mean UMSU (University of Melbourne Student Union) and MUSUL (MU Student Union Ltd—‘MU’ officially doesn’t stand for anything but you can probably guess) are the same thing?
The answer is a resounding no. The two organisations are legally and organisationally separate (they have different roles and leadership), and in fact, it could be said that MUSUL isn’t really a “student union” at all.
UMSU is responsible for student representation, clubs, activities, pushing for social equality, running the Info Desk, AV@Melbourne, and a range of other roles in that general remit. It is run by the elected Students’ Council and its elected Officebearers.
MUSUL is responsible for managing Union House, 130 Degrees catering, the UniStore; and has a service agreement to provide HR, IT, Finance and similar corporate services to UMSU and the GSA. It is run by a Board composed of four University-appointed Directors and three elected students.
Finally, to confuse things more, the GSA (Graduate Student Association) also exists as a third separate entity. It represents the specific needs of graduate students, and runs the 1888 Building on the south end of campus. It is run by a Council elected by graduate students.
In August last year, the Students’ Council (which runs UMSU) convened the Student Bar Steering Committee and tasked it with developing a model (or various options for models) for operating a bar or café which the Students’ Council would then approve. Membership of this committee included the President and General Secretary of UMSU; the President of UMSU International, five students appointed by the Students’ Council, and lastly the General Manager of UMSU, who is a staff member.
Shortly after that came a flurry of activity. A student forum was held in late August; this was well-attended, although there were more questions than answers. A survey was advertised through UMSU’s social media and other channels, which attracted a respectable 244 responses and revealed a desire for cheaper products, better food, nicer beer, and furniture manufactured this side of the Melbourne Model.
The area was also opened as a (mercifully air-conditioned) space that students could use. Comments written by students on wall-mounted butchers’ paper during this time revealed a commitment to pool, karaoke and poorly drawn human genitalia. In short, confidence was high that something bar-like would find its way into that space, and would do so by O-Week.
UMSU also began its first entrepreneurial venture in the space: selling coffee. Despite selling coffee for $3.00 a cup, below the $3.50 standard, it is not obvious that this venture was particularly successful—although UMSU doesn’t make its accounts public at that level of detail.
Still, the experience was no doubt a valuable excursion into what it might take to scale up the operation to offer food and alcohol. But… everything seemed to grind to a halt. The coffee service stopped (not unreasonable, given the precipitous decrease in campus population after exams), the mailing list went silent and the Steering Committee, by all accounts, started to talk itself around in circles.
The basic model was supposed to be something like: UMSU would form a separate entity (which it controlled and wholly owned), this entity would hold the liquor licence, sell the alcohol, run events, lease the rights to food service to a third party, hire a bar manager, and on net neither gain nor lose money. This plan seems to be stalled before stage 1—the model hasn’t been written up to go for Students’ Council to approve.
To kickstart the process, an outside consultant has been contracted to do market research and propose a business plan. To date, the consultants have performed their investigation but not yet provided a plan to the Steering Committee.
A point of contention is the coveted liquor licence: UMSU believes that it needs to be the licensee for the premises to have the flexibility to run the bar the way it wants. MUSUL’s coöperation is necessary to get it transferred. (Forgotten the difference between UMSU and MUSUL already? See our handy explanatory box.) Stalemate.
However, there is some time pressure: Union House is being repurposed, and everyone is getting turfed out at the end of 2017 (at least, so goes the current plan). UMSU listed a space for it to run a café and bar in its needs analysis for its future space, but it’s difficult to see the University agreeing to provide that space, unless UMSU has demonstrated it’s capable of running one.
Perhaps we’ll get to see whether UMSU can run a bar — and let’s be honest, a bar run by students, for students, and at student prices would be pretty damn great. But so far this year, progress seems pretty thin on the ground.