I am truly thankful to the editorial board of The State News for bringing the importance of small businesses to light ("Mom and Pop," SN 5/25).

Nobody I know proposed to their wife at a McDonald's, or invites friends back to this nice little place he knows tucked away in East Lansing called Subway.

I've been here for four years; I'm about to start my last year, and it's disgusting that even my favorite places, before I even become an alumnus, are gone. Blue Note was replaced by some disgusting Roly Poly sandwich shop franchise that served nastily cooked vegetables in tortilla wraps. That's horrible.

You can go home and wolf down all the chain food you want, but for a moment, think about what makes East Lansing special, and how desolate it'd be if it was just row after row of generic chains with no atmosphere.

My only qualm about this editorial is that it wasn't published when more people read the SN, so I hope you put something similar up when the new class comes in the fall.

Kannan Raghunathan
physics senior