Friday, February 11, 2005

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F R I D A Y FEBRUARY 11, 2005

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD Volume CXL, No. 13 ARE YOU BEING SERVED? Benji Samit ’06 adapts Trey Parker for PW’s stage, and ‘Cannibal!’ leaves audience laughing A R T S & C U LT U R E 3

www.browndailyherald.com

An independent newspaper serving the Brown community since 1891 ALL THE PRESIDENT’S PEN? Andrew K. Stein ’06 seems to have been BCC’ed in Simmons’ correspondence OPINIONS

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BACK IN WHITE M. basketball returns to the Pizzitola Center this weekend after nine-game road stretch SPORTS 8

TODAY

TOMORROW

snow 35 / 22

partly cloudy 38 / 21

Publishers UCS committee suggests ‘pods’ as storage solution source of rising textbook costs BY CHRISTOPHER CHON STAFF WRITER

BY JUSTIN AMOAH CONTRIBUTING WRITER

The rapidly rising price of textbooks has the Brown Bookstore and other outlets looking for alternatives and ways to reduce the burden on Brown students. “Rip-off 101,” a study published Feb. 1 by the State Public Interest Research Groups, shows wholesale publishers have increased the costs of textbooks by 62 percent since 1994, more than four times the rate of inflation for all finished goods. According to the study, publishers frequently put out new editions of textbooks without making any significant changes, considerably increasing the costs of textbooks for students. On average, new editions cost 45 percent more than used copies of previous editions, the study found. Bookstore and Services Director Larry Carr recognizes the financial burden on students. Each Brown student buys approximately $500 worth of course books per semester from the Brown Bookstore, Carr said. That figure does not include school supplies and books that students purchase elsewhere, Carr added. Carr said 70 percent of the money students pay for course packets goes toward copyright royalties the Bookstore pays to publishers. The Bookstore has implemented many cost-containment strategies in an attempt to lessen the increasing financial burden put on students by publishers, Carr said. “Our biggest cost-containment effort is to focus on used books,” he said. The Brown Bookstore sells used books for 25 percent less than new books. Thirty percent of the textbooks sold in the Bookstore are used books, a percentage that is higher than some of Brown’s peer stores, including those at Harvard, Duke and Princeton universities, Carr said. Carr said the Bookstore pays approximately $75 to a publisher for a new textbook that will sell for $100. The remaining $25 is allocated towards the cost of freight, store staff, operating and overhead expenses. The Bookstore also buys used books from wholesale publishers, which it typically purchases for 33 percent of the original price, the industry standard, Carr said. The Admission and Student Services committee of the Undergraduate Council of Students is focusing on how to reduce the burden on students, said committee chair Brian Bidadi ’06. In the spring of 2003, UCS asked the Brown Daily Jolt to create a textbook exchange forum on its Web site. The Textbook Exchange allows students to determine their own price for textbooks. “It’s a win-win for students,” Bidadi said. Currently, there are over 1,200 books listed for 350 different classes on the Textbook Exchange, 500 of which were posted in the last month. Of those, 150 have sold, Jolt staffer David Gomel ’06 wrote in an e-mail to The Herald. “We are planning on redesigning the entire Textbook Exchange over the summer to make it more functional and practical,” Gomel wrote. Itiah Thomas ’07 said she uses a variety

An Undergraduate Council of Students ad hoc committee believes it has a viable solution to bringing back free on-campus summer storage for students. The committee plans to present its proposal for approval to the University within the next two weeks. The proposal, which has yet to be finalized in writing, calls for a system of portable trailers, or storage pods, to be strategically placed prior to the end of the school year. These locations would include the Main Green, Wriston Quad and Pembroke

Campus. Students would leave their belongings in the appropriate pods, which would then be driven to University-owned warehouses approximately 10 minutes from campus, where they would remain untouched for the summer. If approved by the University, the system would be available beginning this summer, meaning that pods would be scattered around campus later in the spring semester. David Greene, vice president for campus life and student services, said he encouraged UCS to look into the issue and come up with creative solutions for student stor-

SCHOOL DESEGREGATION

Kori Schulman / Herald

Professor of Sociology John Logan spoke yesterday about the partial desegregation of U.S. public schools. Early studies suggested that efforts to desegregate schools might be neutralized by white flight to other districts. However, metropolitan-level school segregation has declined substantially between 1970 and 1990, he said.

age. Though he has yet to see the official “pods proposal,” Greene said he was willing to work with UCS to find a solution. “I would be very much in favor to find some way to make it easier and less expensive for students to store their belongings over the summer,” Greene said. “I understand there were problems before, but I’ve got to imagine there can be a system better for students, whether it’s the pods idea or what else.” Ben Creo ’07, head of the four-person UCS committee, said the idea of the pods received a positive response from Richard Bova, Residential Life’s director of housing. Bova would most likely be the administrator overseeing the project, according to Creo. “We don’t think this proposal will get rejected,” Creo said. “There is enough support from the student body and UCS to get this passed. We think the issue will be clearly articulated to relevant administrators, and we fully expect a stamp of approval and funding.” The goal is to give students a place to store their larger belongings for free over the summer. Last year, the University stopped providing on-campus storage facilities, leaving students with a variety of relatively unattractive alternatives — pay for space through a professional storage company, ship belongings home, store belongings in a friend’s house, or throw items away. With the close of the semester and final exams, the task of finding a place to store refrigerators, televisions and microwaves for the summer becomes an added burden, students said, particularly for those who live far away. “People who live far (away) or foreign students can’t take anything home,” said Jacob Wallenberg ’05, an international student from Sweden. “We have to put our entire rooms in storage unless we can find a friend’s house. Then again, if we don’t own a car it gets more complicated. Also, we have to catch flights which have been booked in advance, so it’s very tight with finishing up see STORAGE, page 3

of avenues to avoid the prices in the Bookstore. “I go to the library to see if they have any of the books I need, I use the InRhode catalog (to find books from other Rhode Island libraries), buy books online or ask friends that have taken the course if I could use their books,” Thomas said. This semester, Thomas, an urban studies concentrator, said she has paid a total of $138 for books for three classes. Her fourth does not require any textbooks because all the readings are online. “I would assume the textbook industry is a lucrative business,” Thomas said. According to Carr, the Brown Bookstore is in a break-even business. “We’re usually a little over 1 percent per year on the bottom line,” he said. Bidadi said students could further decrease the prices they pay for textbooks if the Bookstore were to make available the course adoptions list, an index of all the books and packets required for each course. “One could search for the cheapest prices online for all their books (if the list were easily available),” Bidadi said. Carr said that making the list available might hurt business, but in the future it may be a feasible possibility. “The Bookstore is looking at our textbook

Editorial: 401.351.3372 Business: 401.351.3269

see TEXTBOOKS, page 4

Students abroad use blogs in lieu of letters home BY TSVETINA KAMENOVA CONTRIBUTING WRITER

Micah Salkind ’06 has to travel 45 minutes to get to his first class each morning. “I can no longer roll out of bed in Slater and get in class five minutes later,” he said. Salkind, a former post- executive editor, is currently studying abroad in Barcelona, but his friends and family are privy to the daily details of his life, including his commute. Everything about his life in Spain can be found on his online blog, from where he lives to which bar he visited last week. For students back at Brown, these entries are a personalized introduction into a foreign world, as well as a letter home from a friend. An increasing number of Brown students studying abroad have blogs or LiveJournals. Most writers, like Salkind, think of blogging as “an alternative to the annoying and longwinded e-mails” that usually circulate as a way to keep in

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touch and inform friends. “It’s a more democratic format,” said Emily Pudalov ’06, who is spending the semester in Sao Paolo, Brazil. “If someone wants to know what is up with me, he can look at it. If he wants to comment on it, then everyone can see it,” she said. Blog content for students studying abroad ranges from sightseeing lists and discussion of classes to funny anecdotes and complete essays, and of course, many pictures. Friends at home can contrast the experiences of their traveling correspondents. For example, former post- Editor-in-Chief Ellen Wernecke ’06 writes of living with a family in Madrid, Spain — where she said everyone but the dog adores her — but her friend Pudalov shares an apartment with an old woman and her maid in Sao Paolo. Students often write essays about the cultural difficulties they experience. “Apparently American culture, in most see BLOGS, page 5

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