Board of Managers Luncheon, StuCo's Goals, And More
Board of Managers Luncheon
Members of Student Council, along with several other students, attended a luncheon with members of the Board of Managers last Friday.
One issue that arose was lack of student members on the ad hoc financial planning committee; Board members explained that this was often a worst-case scenario planning group and thus student involvement would be better focused elsewhere.
Kohlberg Coffee Bar Hours
Of 241 students who voted, about 63% preferred to keep Sunday evening hours, while 32% wanted afternoon hours instead (4.5% voted no preference). Thus, said Vice President Nate Erskine ’10, the Sunday hours will remain the same: 7pm-10pm.
Group Space in Wharton
Erskine raised a point about a space in Wharton basement that is underutilized. The room currently stores old student group possessions and Erskine suggested turning it a meeting space and lockers for groups to use.
Worth Meds Policy Change
President Rachel Bell ’10 said that Worth’s policy on medications was changing, so that students with health insurance will be asked to use that insurance to cover prescription drugs, rather than Worth covering the cost.
StuCo Goals
Campus Life Representative Ambar LaForgia ’11 hopes to work on improving the ML evening shuttle service and publicizing Student Council’s election week in November.
Omari Scott ’12, another Campus Life Representative, wants to improve awareness about Student Council itself, including increasing traffic to its website.
Bell wants to work on flexibility of PE class scheduling for those with disabilities or convoluted class schedules.
Dan Symonds ’11, Financial Policy Representative, noted the issue of rollover money for textbooks in the library; he said that $10,000 wasn’t enough to simply rent textbooks from semester to semester. Instead, the library hopes to purchase inexpensive copies of books for classes with infrequent textbook turnover, and to work with departments to keep using the same texts for more than a couple of semesters.
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#1: 9/28/2009 at 5:27 a.m.
Thank you, Dan Symonds '11. That rental idea was frickin' stupid...
— Peter '11 | Unregistered, Swarthmore
#2: 9/28/2009 at 7:25 a.m.
I'd like to hear what you're opposed to with textbook rental. With more money and less textbook turnover--which would require departmental support we simply don't have--textbook rental would be a great way for some to save up to 75% on the sticker price. It would be time and energy intensive to implement, and I think, strategically nearsighted. I'm now looking into ways to get free shipping on amazon.com for all students, making more books available on blackboard, and working with departments to hold tougher negotiations with publishers to lower textbook prices. But don't let me get ahead of myself--what's so foolish about textbook rental?
— Daniel Symonds | Registered, Non-Swarthmore
#3: 9/28/2009 at 12:08 p.m.
Well, I took a quick look at the rental site they were mentioning and most of the books seemed to be not nearly cheap enough to justify not buying a book that would last for at least a couple of semesters (especially if you bought lightly used editions, which seemed to be about the same price as the rentals). That's what libraries DO. Also, with less textbook turnover rentals would be even LESS economical. Think about it: if the rental site couldn't amortize the cost of their books over the lifetime of the few semesters that a book is popular (no new editions etc.) then they wouldn't have a viable business model. It's like a library renting movies from Blockbuster. Completely ridiculous.
I will say, though, I haven't spent hours pouring over the site; perhaps there are some steals on there. But it seems like your idea of just investing in popular, high-longevity books would make much more sense, no?
— Peter '11 | Unregistered, Swarthmore
#4: 9/28/2009 at 7:31 p.m.
yeah, i guess my idea does make sense. What does amortize mean?
I hadn't looked into the website option; I was only pursuing privately run textbook rentals. I can't imagine how an outside company would save us anything.
Have any good cost saving gripes I can carry through for you?
— Daniel Symonds Bloom | Unregistered, Swarthmore
#5: 9/29/2009 at 12:41 a.m.
In terms of a private company, I was referring to this article: http://daily.swarthmore.edu/2009/9/15/rollover/ which suggested the library would use chegg.com, a proposal which, as I suggested in the comments of that article, is pretty stupid.
Nota bene: my experience in econ is limited to shopping 3 hours of Econ 001, hopefully you have more experience. I'm just going off basic common sense.
My understanding/use of the word amortize: basically just to make up cash spent on a large sum through reimbursements of smaller sums over time. Basically, if a book costs 100 dollars and the rental pace is charging 50 dollars a semester, they would amortize their costs in a year, and it would be stupid for us to buy it if we thought the book would last any amount of time longer than that. Basically if Chegg is able to make a profit, which it obviously is if it's going to continue as a business, it doesn't make sense for us to buy from them for any books that will last much longer than a semester (depending on costs). But perhaps I'm not using the term entirely correctly, that would be for someone more in the know to answer like, say, the Financial Policy Representative.
Cost saving gripes? I'm somewhat concerned that the people who actually proposed the revolving green fund are either not on campus, not in charge of the money, or didn't have a clue to begin with, so I'm a bit concerned we'll never see a profit on any of that, as promised, much less see ANY of that money again, but beyond that...I'll let you know.
— Peter '11 | Unregistered, Swarthmore
#6: 9/29/2009 at 12:45 a.m.
Oh, I see what you're saying. Have the library or bookstore rent out textbooks for a fee themselves, rather than having the library rent textbooks from another company. That makes much more sense. It's just not what I've heard being previously mentioned, so I think that's a cause of some miscommunication. We are talking about two different things.
— Peter '11 | Unregistered, Swarthmore