Conor Daly: It's hard to say goodbye

This semester will function as perhaps the longest funeral in history, allowing us five months to grieve, pay our respects and enjoy for the last time what has become a Penn tradition -- the Palladium. This newspaper printed the restaurant's obituary last week in the form of a normal news- story, capping an almost year-long period in which both the Palladium's die-hard fans and its detractors lobbied the administration for either an extended lease or its quick elimination and subsequent allocation to student groups that are desperate to step up from the dank caves they use as offices to the prime real estate the Palladium has occupied for almost 20 years. When this controversy first began in the fall of 1999, after the University purchased the ARCH building that houses the restaurant and President Rodin approved a new plan for Locust Walk development, the Palladium's future was put into question and Palladium fanatics feared the worse. Our fears were validated when the University decided not to renew the restaurant's lease last spring. The Palladium's advocates immediately set about trying to resuscitate the institution that they deem an important part of Penn's character, facing an administration that is content with seeing the restaurant and its companion cafeteria, the Gold Standard, plummet into oblivion. In the wake of the University's announcement last week, we now know that any further efforts will likely be fruitless, as the administration has made it abundantly clear that such a restaurant enterprise in the ARCH location is not part of God's (Judy's) great plan for space on Locust Walk. They want to replace it with sterile offices and a small "caf‚-like operation." The University's statement about why they have strong-armed the Palladium out appears extremely valid, citing the building's need for renovations to improve health conditions and handicapped access as reasons. Ask anyone who is involved with the minority coalitions that share the ARCH building, and they'll tell you about the nauseating heat and smell of hamburgers that emanate from the restaurants' shared kitchen. Although I agree with the administration about the building's need for renovations, what I don't understand is why then, after the renovations have concluded, a full-service restaurant operation cannot assume the space. Office space is scarce and needed, as there are many student groups who are desperate for any usable space, and while I like cafes, to sacrifice the Palladium and its traditions for some cubicles and a new "Au Bon Pain-East Locust Walk" is too high a price for us Quakers to pay. The Palladium functions as a valuable community-building device and is a meeting place which many alumni value when they return at homecomings and reunions. Simply walk by the restaurant during those times and look at the crowds that mob the business and you will realize what it adds to the Penn experience. How on warm spring days, the activity that surrounds the outdoor dining probably single-handedly creates a lively Locust Walk environment. Characteristics such as these have etched the Palladium into the pantheon of unforgettable Penn institutions, a fact that makes its slow death so unfortunate. The administration's shake-down of the Palladium may reflect a lack of understanding on the part of Penn power-brokers in that they don't realize something that most Penn students do: restaurants like Smokey Joe's (pre-hardwood floors and stained glass), the old Billybob's (complete with turnstile) and the Palladium connect us and help define what it means to attend this University. The food trucks can be included in that phenomenon because really, who among us can think about Penn, whether now as a student or 20 years from now as an alumnus, and not think about Greek Lady Olga, the crepe truck or Hemo's? In 1998, the trucks experienced a shakedown similar to what the Palladium is now experiencing. The administration had grown sick of the crowded sidewalks and poor health standards of some trucks and resolved to clean up the cottage industry by implementing a permit system and creating "open-air food plazas" where trucks could congregate. Like the Palladium, the food trucks were not part of Penn's plans either but are nevertheless important Penn traditions. In that situation, the University worked with the operators of those trucks to come to an acceptable solution, and we now enjoy cleaner food trucks that do not crowd thoroughfares, and they continue as an institution inseparable from how people think of Penn. The Palladium as an institution is no different, but unlike the fate of the food trucks four years ago, we are now helplessly watching it slowly die in favor of dreary offices and another caf‚ that we don't really need in the face of an administration that probably views it as "just a restaurant." This being the case, the Palladium fanatics and I will enjoy our last semester with our meeting place, sitting outside all day and enjoying our cheeseburgers and Yuenglings, hoping that a miracle will end the long funeral and the restaurant will recover from its death sentence, but knowing that its case is terminal. Conor Daly is a senior Political Science major from Boxford, Mass.

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