I need a fix — what comes to mind first, coffee or drugs? In Seattle, it’s usually coffee. So why, in a city so devoted to its java, does our major University allow a near-monopoly of the same mediocre coffee on its campuses?

I know the UW has devoted Tully’s fans, based on my own quizzing of random people on buses. However, even if you like the insipid, stew-like taste of Tully’s coffee, why can’t the rest of campus have other options?

Through a contract with Housing and Food Services (HFS), Tully’s coffee has taken over all 20 of the UW’s coffee shops run by HFS. Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the contract are some of the faces behind it. Tully’s founder and chairman, Tom “Tully” O’Keefe, happens to be a proud alumnus of the UW. Tully’s president and CEO John Buller, also a UW alumnus, worked as the executive director of the University of Washington’s Alumni Association before he accepted his position at Tully’s.

Defend the decision to bombard the campus with Tully’s coffee all you like, but it’s worth it to examine if some very big strings might have been pulled to secure the contract with the UW. The funny part is, as much as HFS inflates their prices (what happened to $2.49 Subway specials?), this decision had little to do with money (unless the person who cut the deal happens to have an abundance of Tully’s stock).

In a press release, HFS boasts of selling about 40,000 pounds of coffee per year at 20 of its venues. Although the Starbucks on the Ave refused to release their sales information, after being a barista with the company for over a year, I know the average store goes through seven to eight five-pound bullets a day, not including whole beans sales. That’s well over 12,000 pounds per year, per store. When comparing the two figures, Starbucks venues could sell five times the amount of coffee Tully’s does.

To the Fair Trade Coffee Coalition at the UW, Tully’s is its pride and joy. The first fair trade espresso blend was created specially for the UW by Tully’s. This makes it possible to make any coffee beverage with fair trade coffee, which was a big step for the fair trade movement. It’s unfortunate, in my own opinion, that the stuff pairs better with a boiled sock than a cinnamon scone.

Tully’s isn’t the only company that has caught on to the fair trade fad. Fair trade means coffee buyers pay above a certain price per pound of coffee. This ensures farmers of Third World countries are paid enough to lead decent lives. However, some companies take this standard another step. Starbucks, for example, has built schools and even developed hospitals for the villages of their farmers.

If the UW offered a contract for 20 coffee joints on the condition of making fair trade espresso available, any company would take advantage. Since fair trade is so important to students on campus, allowing other coffee companies to compete for students’ business would encourage companies to produce more and better-tasting fair trade coffees. If companies produced fair trade coffees that tasted better, coffees that would find their names on the favorites list, then Americans as a whole would be more prone to support the fair trade cause.

The solution is not to have both coffee behemoths Starbucks and Tully’s on campus. A greater diversity of coffee types akin to Parnassus in the Art Building should be encouraged. Some people prefer the smooth sweet taste of Hawaiian coffees, while others prefer something between Starbucks and Tully’s, like Peet’s Coffee Co., whose owners, from my own experience, taught the Starbucks founders everything they know about making coffee. They still practice the handcrafted art of Tully’s, but use a quality of beans to which Starbucks can’t compare. Peet’s is looking for new venues after Larry’s Market, its largest venue in Washington, closed its doors.

Some health food lovers might be attached to Tully’s because of its commitment to organic coffee. What organic loyalists overlook is that a lot of coffee is organic because coffee farmers are too poor to afford pesticides, much less a costly organic certification. In fact, most coffee plants have so much caffeine in them that it works as a natural pesticide for bugs, who are tempted by the sweet red cherries. Just because it doesn’t have the little green organic symbol doesn’t mean that it isn’t organic.

Tully’s presence on campus has nothing to do with supporting a good cause, eating healthier, price or even quality. Loyal Tully’s fans and questionable administration actions have caused us to overlook the obvious benefits of buying from other coffee producers. By opening up new contracts under the requirement of some fair trade coffee, HFS would not only produce more revenue but would also encourage good ol’ capitalist innovation among coffee companies to produce more sellable fair trade goods.

Reach reporter Celeste Flint at opinion@thedaily.washington.edu.