Last Friday, we saw the opening of the Fairfield University Bookstore. Perhaps they should have named it “A Faulty Investment for Appearance and Profit.”
Why? Let’s see. If it’s a University bookstore, one would assume that the primary books marketed would be textbooks and other publications required for class, only augmented by a selection of famous or related books. One would assume.
When my roommate and I went to the bookstore on Monday, he had the intention of purchasing “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” for his Shakespeare class. I did not think we would find a problem here, as this is one of Shakespeare’s most well known plays in addition to being a requirement for an important class for English majors.
As you can probably guess, they did not have it. I accepted this reality with some understanding, as I assumed someone else had already bought the book. However, I thought they might want to stock more than one of each title; this singularity in stock was true of all the Shakespeare plays present.
I then went to the philosophy section to see if they had “Questions Concerning Technology,” a book for my philosophy class focused on Martin Heidegger, a famous German philosopher. The book is required by the teacher, so once again I made the assumption that they would have it.
And once again, nothing. But I didn’t accept this as easily as the missing Shakespeare because there are only five people in the Heidegger class; although there wouldn’t be as great of a demand for the book, it wouldn’t sell out as quickly as a result and furthermore would be present because it was a required textbook.
But it’s not as if the philosophy section wasn’t stocked. The first thing that caught my eye was a book titled “Twilight and Philosophy.”
Really? Is it more important that I, a Fairfield student, have access to a book that explains the philosophical basis of the latest fad in recycled teenage drama over the texts required by a class that explores the essence of being?
After further inspection, I noticed that the most of the philosophy section followed suite with the “(insert shallow pop culture publication here) and Philosophy” formula. Even though some of them could have been interesting to me personally (for example, “South Park and Philosophy”), I still think that a bookstore made by a University for its students first and townspeople second should be marketing books that assist the student in their studies.
Think about it! Our tuition essentially payed for the bookstore… so the books we are also paying for should be ones that ensure our success.
All of this points to the faulty logic behind this investment. Borders closed for a reason, and that’s because it wasn’t selling enough books. So we open a bookstore in its place, despite a budget gap exceeding 4 million dollars and a perfectly adequate on-campus bookstore. Yeah, let’s sign a 10-year lease for a 23,000 square foot property in the prime retail location of Fairfield instead of maintaining or even expanding the existing bookstore on the property we already own.
Even after overlooking these realities, I’m still baffled. Buying a bookstore was one thing. But not stocking it with course materials to make room for titles one would expect to find at Spencer’s or Hot Topic? That’s a smart move. Abandon the guaranteed sales for the psuedo-intellectual pop culture marketing ploys.
Yeah Fairfield, that’s a good idea.
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