When I first arrived at ASU and heard about Hayden Mall, I figured the name was one of those vintage pseudonyms meant to hearken nostalgia from days of yore in students and faculty.
Take, for instance, the "Art Café" in the Memorial Union. There is no actual art there anymore, but the name drums up fond recollections of a simpler time, when oil on canvas still trumped lox and bagels. It just makes you feel cultured as you scarf your complex carbs.
Or how the "Brickyard on Mill" isn't an actual yard of bricks, or a mill for that matter. So you can understand why it didn't occur to me to take Hayden Mall literally. I should have known better.
I am talking about the extravaganza of crap paraded daily under banners and tents pitched on that stretch of "the mall" between the MU and Matthews Hall.
Going to classes has become an exercise in ignoring hecklers and tripping over beer posters and bonsai trees. Aside from my shock that anyone would want to buy a tank top that has been touched by the entire student population at lunch hour, and loaded in and out of the back of a windowless van month after month by a guy named Chet (who wears wraparounds and Tevas with socks), there is a deeper issue at the heart of my annoyance with the shameless commercialism and cheap vending stints that thrive on Hayden Mall.
I park in Lot 59. This is because time and again, ASU Parking officials have assured me that there are absolutely NO available spots closer to my classes. Yet, every morning I pass Chet's windowless van along with three or four others vans and hatchbacks, parked prominently on the mall, which is advertised as a pedestrian thoroughfare. Half-parked on the lawn and in my way, I take note of their flaunting lack of ASU parking decals.
This, as you can imagine, confounds me and makes me a little angry. Because I can guarantee that in my 3 years here, the amount of money I have poured into ASU (tuition, room and board, parking citations, etc.) far exceeds the dollar amount on the check the cell-phone and sunglasses people give to ASU.
Perhaps it is simply a sign that our intrepid university is embracing the entrepreneurial spirit in its most organic form—the American way, as brought to you by Voicestream.
After all, the ASU College of Business that espouses this very entrepreneurial spirit is one of the leading programs nationwide. But just take a quick look at the people running the cash boxes at the "foakleys" table and trading stale skittles for surveys: they're not exactly MBA material.
What bothers me is the message ASU is sending to its students: "Sure you're paying us to learn, but the cell-phone-credit-card-bonsai-candle-poster-people are paying us, too, and if they can make an extra buck off you, we aren't going to stop them."
The University should stop them. There should be a hard and fast line between commercialism and the academic community. ASU students pay tuition for the privilege of taking classes on campus, not shopping.
If I want to shop, I'll go to the mall—the real one. I realize that this column won't make the tents on the mall disappear in a puff of smoke, or give me permission to park on Hayden Lawn. It's an unfair world; I already know that. Just let me deal with my disappointment alone, free from the bargains on "the mall."
Katie Petersen is an English and biology junior. Reach her at Katie.Petersen@asu.edu.
