UA Recap: Penn Book Bazaar an early success

The Undergraduate Assembly discussed some of its early successes at the first weekly meeting of the year on Sunday.

The Penn Book Bazaar — a UA project which debuted in late August to allow students to buy, sell and exchange textbooks online with no middleman — had the UA body in high spirits.

Secretary and College junior Cynthia Ip reported the Book Bazaar’s success in both its user traffic and postings and its direct visits and searches — “that means that people remember the name,” she said.

“If the bookstore pulls emergency advertising over the student listservs, you did something right,” said College senior Emerson Brooking, a UA representative and Daily Pennsylvanian columnist.

The UA discussed technical problems to be solved — removing sold books, reformatting cross-listing data, creating an option to donate books that don’t sell, establishing PennKey access and possibly adding price comparison and seller-rating features — as well as ways to maintain the site and its publicity.

The body also discussed the upcoming PennApps competition. PennApps, an annual “hackathon” event where students gather to program web and mobile applications to improve student life, will take place this weekend.

The approximately 70 participants that have signed up for PennApps will present their pitches Thursday night, and the UA was invited to suggest ideas for programs to better the student experience.

Ideas pitched by the body include a database of vacant study and performing spaces on campus, a Book Bazaar-type program for sublets, a Penn Athletics calendar complete with tailgate information, fraternity party listings for freshmen and a program to locate free food.

The body also brought the Division of Public Safety’s regulation against bikes on Locust Walk under review and noted the Penn Book Center’s lack of policy for scholarship money.

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