In my first column for The Diamondback, I wrote about how a group of students saved late-night study at McKeldin Library by forcing the administration to listen to them. At the end of the piece, I warned that the structural problems concerning student involvement in decision-making had not been solved and that, without student vigilance, the administration would continue to make major choices for the school behind closed doors. One semester later, I’m disappointed to have been proven right.
This May, our contract with Barnes & Noble to manage the University Book Center expires. Stamp Student Union officials are now deciding how the bookstore will run for the next five years. Students have been eager to advise the administration. I’ve written more than a few columns, the student advisory board (on which I sat) had a number of fresh ideas and The Diamondback published an editorial (“Booking creative solutions,” Oct. 28) encouraging the administration to consider a co-op bookstore model. Unfortunately, the decision-makers have shown themselves unwilling to involve students in any substantial way. Only one member on the decision-making board (the lone student representative) will actually buy textbooks at the new UBC.
Any change – or continuation of the status quo – will affect the entire university community. Textbook access, like tuition and housing, is an essential school service. The way the university provides these services should be open to public scrutiny. If any group is excluded from the decision-making process, their interests go unrepresented. Having student interests unprotected in a decision of this magnitude is simply unacceptable.
The only reason to lock students out of the decision-making process is to mischaracterize our interests, which is a serious danger when it comes to the bookstore. As The Diamondback editorial board pointed out in its piece last semester, co-op bookstores have lower mark-ups when it comes to pricing compared to for-profit stores such as Barnes & Noble. At a time when students and their families are feeling the financial pain of our current economic downturn, the university should seize any opportunity to save students money.
The majority of people on the board will have the best interests of the university, not the students, in mind when choosing how the bookstore will operate. This means they would, in all likelihood, prefer a contract that guarantees more money for the school and higher prices for students. This amounts to a de facto tuition increase.
The university may claim that the single meeting with the five-member advisory board was sufficient student input. As 20 percent of that group, I can assure you it was not. The board, which included Student Government Association President Jonathan Sachs and Graduate Student Government President Anupama Kothari, had a lot of great ideas for fundamental changes to the UBC. They included everything from merchandise placement to whether the bookstore should be contracted to a for-profit company. If that’s what five students had to say, I wonder what a public forum could generate. But without a fully open process, how can we be sure that the board is even considering what the five of us said? After the incident with McKeldin’s late-night study, I’m not inclined to give the administration the benefit of the doubt.
There can be no excuse for not substantially involving all the stakeholders in this important decision. If sunlight is the best disinfectant, then darkness breeds corruption and deceit. Were the administration truly acting in our interests, then they should have nothing to fear from a public forum. If they’re not, then they are not the right people to make such a choice in the first place.
Students won the late-night study campaign because the outcry was too big for the administration to ignore. Now it’s time for us to raise our collective voice again and ensure that our school protects its students’ interests.
Malcolm Harris is a sophomore English and government and politics major. He can be reached at harrisdbk@gmail.com.
