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Show W r Tuesday, February 6, 2007 between deserving and undeserving grades. To remedy that, some students stick strictly to syllabi like Hodgsons to make the grade. Why wouldnt you be able to earn an A by following a syllabus? asked senior and arts administration major Stephanie Christensen. Thats what a syllabus is for. Some syllabi arent so cut and dry, though. Its been suspected that grade inflation if it does exist exists mostly within the humanities classes, including English and philosophy. I think its difficult to hold the same grading standards to humanity students because grading is more subjective and the grading criteria are not cut and dry, Hodgson said. Ultimately, grade inflation hides a students potential from deservedly becoming honors students 'Honors shouldnt become like exclamation points, said Hodgson. If there are too many of them it loses its Other Colleges that made the Princeton Review's uBest 361 Colleges a I . r-- Classified Ads planned! 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Thursday night. ...continuedfrom page 1 , Follett Bookstore semester starts to meet the needs of every student. Gretchen Siegler, professor of anthropology agreed. Its hard to teach when you dont have the book, she stud. Westminster administrators are also feeling the detriment of the bookstore. I feel like Im spinning my wheels, said Michelle Parrish, administrative assistant in the School of Arts and Sciences and liaison between the faculty at her department and the bookstore. I dont have control over what the bookstore does and what the faculty needs, she said. Parrish receives book order forms, passes them out to professors, collects them and gives them to the bookstore. The orders then are supposed to be made, but sometimes the orders are not placed in time. First and foremost, Follett is a business, and like all businesses, it is concerned with making money. Every semester Follett takes an overhead risk by ordering about 460 titles (about 10,000 books) with no guarantee they will be purchased. To protect themselves from this substantial risk, Follett has a formula to determine which titles and how many to purchase. We order according to registration, course history (number of students who took the course in previous semesters) and book histhe book in tory (number of students who purchased the bookstore), said Sue Kelsey, bookstore manager at Follett. Three weeks after the beginning of the semester Follett has to ship back all the new books it wasn t able to sell. If it doesnt send back the books by tnat time, the is publisher will not refund Follett the full price. It why students have a deadline to return book purchases. The prices of the books are determined by the publisher. The publisher pays the author for the book and receives the printing costs to make copies. Once Follett while books, it ships out to the correct bookstore, all making sure it secures a profit. Follett has enjoyed a monopoly on the textbook business at Westmimter, but the rise uf online book and Ilalt.com, has uuying, including Amazon.com Volume XL: Issue 11 been reason to see that monopoly slip away. According I become'. part of a students library, said Kelsey. Used to Student Watch, lfijpercent of all textbooks are being j textbooks are sold at 75 percent of the publishers list purchased online, reported the October 2005 Follett ; price, which is a 25 percent saving for students. newsletter that is distributed to College Administrators Siegler suggested another solution. I would like to around the country. It also reported that 21 percent of ihave a culture of using the Internet when it comes to order students surveyed in March 2005 bought at least one books, she said, adding that students should become rebook online, which is an increase of 18 percent from sponsible for buying their own textbooks at the beginning of the semester. Since professors know what books they are-- , the previous study in October 2004. But some students have experienced firsthand Fol-let- ts going to use months ahead of time, it wouldnt be hard to send an email to students in a particular class. But Siegler unwillingness in offering students basic book information to purchase online and at other bookstores." also understands the position that Kelsey and textbook coLast semester, senior Kathleen Bratcher had to look ordinator Caiti Hawldns are in. Both of them have a really Hard job, caught in this bind when bookstores are becom-.in- g elsewhere for a Web design book since it had been canobsolete, she said. Siegler suggested Follett remain on celled at Follett. Sh called Follett for additional information about the book to order it. Follett refused to campus, but to sell things other than textbooks. Follett has had a contract with Westminster since give me the ISBN number, she said. 1981. Recently, the college has renewed its contract until 2008. Though Westminster entertained a number of profor the bookstore before they signed, there were books posals two clear front runners: Follett and Barnes & Noble. The bookstore committee was given the task to decide between class. on the two contracts. Though administrators believed Barnes - Steve Haslam, assistant professor of French and & Noble would have represented a healthy change in the of the Foreign Language Department college, the committee chose to renew Folletts contract. Bratchers situation of resorting to other book buying As outlined in their agreement, Follett gives a seven permethods because of the vacancy in the store is not unique. cent of its sales profits to the college. If the sales reach over half a million dollars, that percentage increases. In Because of the formula that Follett has in place for deteressence thats their rent because we give them the space, mining the number of books to buy, there is no guarantee i Its unprofessional and unnerving to not have the first day of co-ch- air there are enough copies for any given class. Haslam said the entire faculty put in their book orders for this semester in October of last year. The system needs to be adjusted somehow and Im not sure what the answer is, he said. its hard Since the bookstore is not campus-owncto find an easy solution. But one may be keeping old editions of hooks, similar to editions a student mav need, in the library. Textbooks that are old editions or have no financial resale value and should d, out-of-pri- nt said Executive Vice President Steve Morgan. It is a mutually beneficial simation for both parties. Morgan said Follett was ultimately chosen because of its promise to bring new life" to the college. But many arent so sure. Mv number one concern is to get the students what j they need on time, said Parrish. What worked for Follett in 1981 isnt going to cut it in 2007. She asked a question mam ponder: When the bookstore stops being a convenience for the students, then is it really worth having it? Page 7 |