After spotting a recent edition of the Collegiate Times that featured two different articles on its front page, one about library budget cuts and the other about a project to expand the gym, sociology graduate students Gary Wood, JP Mason, and Tugrul Keskin felt the need to mobilize.
"We were sitting at the celebration for the Iranian New Year at Squires the week before," said Mason, "and (we) had a copy of the CT and the two articles were just stacked one on top of the other with the $1 million cut from the library and the $12 million expansion project at McComas."
"It was just too ironic. Boom. Boom," Wood said about the paper while the four of us huddled around a table in Bollo's mid-afternoon last week.
To start, the trio sent out an email to various listservs and made fliers - which featured the picture of a professional weight lifter in one box and Albert Einstein in the other with an inscription under it that read, "What is your choice? Library or Gym?"
This helped to sow the seeds for a discussion about an issue that the trio feels is pertinent to anyone studying at Virginia Tech or living in Blacksburg.
"It's important for everyone who is a member of this community, who is a member of this university. This is an academic institution," Keskin said.
For a place to meet, the group decided to descend upon a downtown staple, The Cellar. On the night of the meeting, about 25 individuals congregated at the restaurant to express their concern about the university's future plans.
In the end, the community seemed to call for Einstein.
"Yesterday, the university announced that in fact they are not going to make the cut because of expression of public sentiment about the issue, so rather than cutting $700,000 dollars from the budget ... They're increasing the budget by $300,000 so the net gain is a million dollars for next year," Wood said. "We're still meeting because the issue isn't going away. Budgets are cyclical, annually, and the priorities are still out of balance in my view."
Meeting at The Cellar to discuss hot topics or issues of any kind is something that has always been a part of the history of the establishment since its inception in 1963. According to manager Chris Jackson, conversation is encouraged by the very design of the restaurant.
"The downstairs," Jackson said, "was designed by architecture professors. It was designed as a space where you can have a conversation - so naturally we have a lot of architects and professor-like people simply because you can hold a conversation."
In the dim light of the downstairs floor of the Cellar, parts of the white roof connect to partitions in the wall opposite the bar and create small, intimate booths. There are tables and chairs everywhere as well as the opportunity to sit back, ponder, or drink. But, depending on what floor of the Cellar one sits, there are different atmospheres and constituents to encounter.
"Upstairs is a little bit different from the downstairs," Jackson said. "There tends to be an older crowd. It's a little quieter, except when there's music. I think it's just about tables and chairs and being able to sit down with your friends. But, we definitely have our fair share of students."
And on certain nights, a microcosm of the university can all be found under the green awning.
"On a Friday happy hour or something like that," Jackson said, "I'll have seven different departments represented in this upstairs from biologists, to education majors, to architecture (and) English - everything across the board."
Throughout its history, the location has been a meeting destination for all types of groups from the Democratic Socialists of America during the '80s and '90s to the Coalition for Justice in South America.
"The Coalition for Justice started out in the '80s," Wood said, " ... At the time, they used to meet in The Cellar; we used to meet in The Cellar. One, it's a cellar so there are certain atmospherics there. But again, well back then, maybe more people could smoke and they could have their beer and people could bang the table. It was sort of a public space. I think that people that were involved then in the Coalition for Justice in Central America, a lot of them were from the town, too; it was a community coalition, so it made sense."
Though recent success has been found in the library's decision not to cut budgets, the trio believes that there is still much more to discuss.
"We want to want to continue to press the issue at the state legislature level because they're partially responsible for our annual budget in that area. The overall issue ... is that Virginia Tech's ranking among research libraries at research institutions is very low. Near the very bottom. So the idea is to move into the top."
For now, questions about future plans for meeting and discussing university budgeting issues at the Cellar hang in the air. The next scheduled meeting is at More Than Coffee.
"We may," Morgan said about meeting at The Cellar again. "It was just a little loud last week upstairs. We were expecting a smaller group, honestly. The number of people that showed up, yeah, it was a little bit loud."
Of course, this in no way means that another trip to The Cellar will be delayed.
"We also have movie night tonight at the Black Cultural Center," Keskin said. "After that, we are going to The Cellar."