Bookstore report stirs controversy

Debate revolves around making book lists open to Barnes & Noble. With its near-unanimous rejection of its own committee's recommendation Wednesday night, University Council demonstrated that attitudes toward the new Barnes & Noble bookstore remain as contentious as ever. Council's bookstore committee recommended last month that instructors be required to post the reading lists for their courses on the World Wide Web -- rather than ordering the books directly from whatever book store they choose -- so every area store could offer the texts for every course. But that drew harsh words from Council members and in recent editions of Almanac, as critics charged that such a requirement would only help Barnes & Noble dominate local stores like House of Our Own or the Penn Book Center by undercutting their prices. And the thought that professors could be forced to divulge their reading lists against their will seemed to some an infringement on academic freedom. "I'm ready to go to the wall for the freedom that faculty enjoy," said Council member Matthew Ruben, a School of Arts and Sciences graduate student. "As an instructor, I [would] never, for one, comply with this policy." Many Council members also questioned the report's explanation for why professors would avoid ordering from Barnes & Noble. Some professors, the report says, order books from the shoestring-budget Campus Text operation in order to "encourage the entrepreneurial spirit of former students," while others "favor friends or their intellectual comrades with their book orders" -- presumably a dig at the left-leaning House of Our Own. "I think I was chilled by a wind from the '50s," Communications Professor Larry Gross said at Wednesday's Council meeting. The report's language "injected a wholly inappropriate and offensive note" into the committee's recommendation, he added. Bookstore committee Chairperson Robert Regan did not address such complaints at the meeting, although he later admitted that the report's phrasing "was probably a rhetorical blunder." The report's substantive recommendations did not fare much better. Regan, an English professor, argued that giving stores equal access to course lists would encourage duplicate book orders, leading to increased competition and lower prices. Currently, "everyone is selling books at list prices," said Regan, adding "that with competition some [books] might sell under list prices." But most at Council believed equal access would only work to the advantage of Barnes & Noble, which can better absorb the costs of book returns. And many faculty warned that dominance by Barnes & Noble would make scholarly books hard to find. "Medieval history would be under the water right now if it depended on commercial collections," History Professor David Ludden said at the meeting, referring to Provost Stanley Chodorow's academic specialty. Bookstore committee member Adam Sherr, the marketing coordinator for Dining Services, stressed that the committee merely hoped to address student and parent requests for all books to be offered by Barnes & Noble. Although the bookstore committee comprises 15 people, only seven were at the meeting last spring where the report was approved, Regan said. One original member, research administrator Susan Passante, resigned in frustration in April. "I never received notification of the meetings in a timely fashion," said Passante, a former bookseller. And no student member attended a meeting -- an omission Regan attributed to the students' negligence, although committee member and College junior Noah Bilenker said he was never informed of the meeting times and was never contacted by Regan. Other members either could not be reached or declined to comment, citing their fear that the report was "controversial."

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