First it was an ideological muttering that resulted from the University’s contract with Pepsi.

Now it’s financial.

While there was grumbling about having a single company provide 80 percent of the beverages on campus, it has been balanced by the fact that BGSU and its student organizations will be receiving large sums of money.

Besides, if anybody wants a Coke, they can go off-campus, right?

The events of the last couple days have thrust doubt into even these areas.

With the former, it appears as though the contract might indirectly cost the University its recycling program.

Due to the fact that Pepsi has placed numerous vending machines that vend containers other than cans, there are going to be a lot less cans to be recycled. Since plastic bottles bring little to no profit, the loss of cans will possibly result in a loss of about $40,000, according to estimates.

Monetary loss is enough to raise doubt by itself, but that money is essential for the continuation of the recycling program. Without it, the program won’t be able to operate.

What is disturbing about this development is the lack of foresight. Whenever the status quo is disrupted, programs that are affected will need to change along with everything else.

So why didn’t anyone consider the effects this would have upon the recycling program, which is tied directly into the consumption of beverages?

Other universities have made deals with beverage companies. In those contracts, provisions were made so that this sort of thing would not happen to the recycling programs. Didn’t the broker of this contract do their homework?

BGSU has been looking into these “pouring rights” for two years. Shouldn’t somebody have looked at how a number of other universities handled the same type of contracts?

The iconoclasts from WFAL ran into another provision that the student body was not aware of. What began as a clever promotion to hand out free Coke ended up exposing how much of a monopoly Pepsi has over campus beverage consumption.

What came out of the debacle is that University funds of any type cannot be used for the purchase of Coca-Cola products.

In that light, what were to happen if a University-funded organization had an end-of-semester party, using a small amount of funds to treat its members to a free dinner?

More importantly, what if the restaurant they supped at only carried Coca-Cola products?

As was said before, why wasn’t possibilities like this thought of beforehand? This contract was two years in the making, and it still feels as though it was rushed.

It already appears that not enough thought and research was put into this contract.

What other surprises will this deal with the Pepsi corporation have in store?