Published: February 16, 2011

Every new semester brings about the same routines for Fordham students. We feel out our first couple of classes, get to know our professors and buy the books we’ll be using for the rest of the year. This last item on our lists, however, has changed dramatically in the last few years.

It used to be that campus bookstores were the only convenient place to buy the books required to pass our classes. As such, they had an inordinate amount of power over students; it was either pay the bookstore’s price or go without the books, and your grades would most likely suffer. It’s this kind of mentality that allows the Fordham bookstore to charge prices like those reported in Katie Berry’s article, “Record Number of Packages in Mail Room.”

Today, things are much different. When Amazon and eBay emerged onto the Web in 1995, they presented students with a new freedom. By providing a convenient link to discount sellers or other students, these sites now make it possible for students to buy some of their books for prices less than half those charged by the bookstore. With the added attraction of not having to deal with unfriendly cashiers, online shopping has become one of the most popular ways for students to buy their textbooks.

This change has improved students’ situations greatly. Not only do we no longer have to rely on extra scholarships or part-time jobs to pay for our required materials, but we can also avoid the bookstore lines in the first few weeks of school.

A full month into the new semester, however, we have discovered a new problem stemming from this situation. With so many students buying their textbooks online and getting them sent to the dorms, the McMahon package room has been inundated with packages. If you walk by the package room during its operating hours, you can see the line of students waiting to pick up their textbooks.

To their credit, the package room attendants have done the best they can in their situation. A room as small as theirs makes sorting and storing packages in an easily accessible manner almost impossible. The new, wholly electronic system they instituted last September has proved to be both efficient and convenient. Although they may be the easiest targets for the frustration that builds up waiting in line, the package room attendants should not be our scapegoats.

If anyone is to blame, it is the bookstore. It is the unaffordable prices that drove students away from bookstore shelves and onto eBay and Amazon. It is the bookstore’s failure to provide reasonably priced textbooks that brought in the surge of deliveries to the package room. It is their adherence to an old, monopolistic position that made the package room line stretch past ID Services. If the current situation is to improve at all, it has to start with the bookstore.

Although their prices may be partially determined by suppliers, the bookstore could make a few small changes to lower prices. They could offer earlier editions of the most expensive textbooks as an option for those on a tight budget. Many of the language books come bundled with unnecessary supplies. Stocking just the basic required materials might attract students back to physical stores.

And if they won’t lower their prices, well, we know where to go.