Train cars are wonderful. But high-end restaurants? Not so much.

You might not know it from glancing at the restaurants in the downtown area, but most UW Tacoma students are not blessed with a bounty of extra cash. So why would organizers hoping to put train cars on the tracks running through campus fill the dining car with a "high end" restaurant? Indochine, The Melting Pot, and Two Koi might be delicious, but they're hardly affordable. The downtown area needs more student-friendly businesses-especially if they're leasing from the university. This would not only attract a built-in clientele of roughly 3,000 people that are here on a daily basis, but encourage students to linger on campus, socialize, and spend their hard-earned dollars. The administration is already trying so hard to make us less of a commuter campus and encouraging students to stay for events, but if there's nowhere to grab something to eat before these evening events, people are just going to head home. What we can't figure out is why the train's organizers are ignoring the needs of so many potential customers. Why try to attract a whole different population of restaurant-goers when UWT students are already here, filling up parking spaces and going straight home after class to eat where they can afford it? Furthermore, there are plenty of splurge-worthy eateries in the area already. Adding another one would simply be redundant. Sure, some of us enjoy taking our significant other out to a fancy dinner for Valentine's Day or an anniversary, but having a restuarant exist solely for special occasions - especially on campus, makes absolutely no sense. It's like having an expensive dining room table that you only use for Thanksgiving, and can't touch for the rest of the year. Last November, Grassi's owner Ken Grassi was quoted by the News Tribune as saying, "You can get taco bars and those types of things, and that's what the students want and that's their budget. But if you want quality retail, then you have to support us. It's that simple." With all due respect to Ken Grassi, we believe that quality can and should be affordable-and if it's not, we'd rather have what's cheap and fast. More importantly, the university's first responsibility should be to its students, not local retailers. Not that we're completely against local retailers. We wouldn't want anything as corporate as McDonald's planting their greasy feet on our campus, but being a commuter campus, we need food that will satisfy our hunger while not emptying our wallets. Personally, we'd love to see a Dick's on campus (or in Tacoma at all). What would be wrong with a taco bar on Pacific Avenue? Or an inexpensive bakery? Or a 24-hour coffee shop? Or a second-run movie theater? If the organizers are serious about generating community support for their project, they should be conscious of who the community is. The train should follow the lead of Metro Coffee, Buzzard's, or Urban Xchange and offer us an inexpensive place to pick up any number of things and socialize with friends. While we love the idea of the train cars making the campus more attractive to students and business owners, we're far less enthusiastic about space in the middle of our campus being used for yet another business students can't afford to patronize. -See "Train cars on campus a possibility" on page 1 of issue 11 or on our Web site at uwtledger.com for more information.