We Don’t Have Water, Is Pepsi Okay?
New York University is a Coke school.
You can see it in images of their sponsored clothing. Coca-Cola. We can call it a Coke school because of the marketing cues, NYU has a pouring rights contract with Coca-Cola.
A pouring rights contract in this case is a contract given to a school by a beverage company for exclusive rights to sell their products. Meaning you won’t find Pepsi on NYU campuses. The contracts will dictate how much of the product is on the campus and where you will find it. In some cases, the companies even extend their services to fraternities and sororities. At no cost to the school or the chapter, they install dispensers into the houses for their product. At first glance, I kinda thought who cares? I’ve long since given up drinking soda. The contractual agreements, however, seem to put students more at risk than convenience.
Some schools making these deals get millions of dollars, prompting the thought that perhaps the education is improved for the student body as a whole, as well as the faculty and supporting staff. Instead, most of the money has been found to make its way back to athletics. The majority of students rarely benefit from the constant marketing which at times dismisses proven tactics nutritionists used to promote drinking water.
I can’t speak much about the money from a budget standpoint. Even in researching what goes on with pouring rights contracts, I don’t know what it takes to make a budget for a university. I believe though universities and students should care about their health, especially students who for the first time in their lives are left on their own to make decisions on what food they’ll eat or habits they form. The FDA reports we should have, maximum, 50 grams of sugar a day. Coke and Pepsi have about 40 grams of sugar.
In contracts analyzed it was found that at LSU the ratio of students to coke vending machines must remain at 100:1. The student body population, as of 2015, is 31,527. Meanwhile, in the spring of 2017, the student senate allocated a surplus budget to add 15 water fountains to 15 buildings. They state the reasoning to be the popularity of the machines, but should it be the responsibility of the students to provide an adequate number of drinking fountains?
In my experience at Hunter College, the hardest thing to do is find a water fountain. Yet each floor of hunter north has about three vending machines, two for snacks and one for drinks. I know if I need to fill a water bottle I need to go to the third floor where often a line forms of students waiting to fill their water bottle.
Pouring rights, though on the outside seem beneficial, often provide nothing for the people who are most at risk for falling for their tactics. Students should be aware in a time where we are so used to ads we often forget what they look like. We even miss it when it’s sitting right below our collar bone, like a medal or the name of our school’s mascot: Coca-Cola.