Questions about costs unanswered during bookstore forum

Southeast Missouri State University students and faculty were left with unanswered questions about the cost of textbook rentals and other services proposed by a potential vendor of the school's bookstore, Follett Higher Education Group, at an open forum discussion in Glenn Auditorium on Thursday afternoon.

Bruce Snyder, vice president of marketing at Follett, spoke on behalf of the company. Several students and faculty from a crowd of about 50 people asked questions related to the cost involved in the proposed services Follett was offering, and Snyder said he was unable to answer them.

Laura Stock, director of business operations at Southeast, offered her explanation on the matter during the presentation.

"When you are talking about a contract of this scope where it involves the bookstore and textbook rentals, it's got so many different pieces and fingers. There are a lot of negotiation points," Stock said. "So we're hesitant to get a lot of pricing information out there because, quite frankly, we're just at the relative beginning of this process of working with Follett and some of those price points could change."

Stock said the purpose of the open forums is to give students the opportunity to voice their viewpoints and opinions about the venders. This is the university's way of getting student feedback since they are not yet directly involved in any decision.

"What [the students] think is very important to us, and it could change things, but it's a long process," Stock said.

Jake Leffler, a senior at Southeast, spoke out with his questions and concerns multiple times during the presentation.

"Right now our textbook rental program is really good. I came from a community college before I came here, and I was forced to buy textbooks there," Leffler said. "So this is a great improvement to that, but I'm kind of still curious to how this is an improvement from what we have now."

"We've got the objectives: student success, accessibility and affordability, and all of those things are closely related," Snyder said. "But when you just take one scenario and say how does it benefit you, and it's cost basis only, yours may come in cheaper, or it may not. I don't know where we'll land. But it will change."

Even though no specifics on cost were provided, Snyder proposed Follett's IncludED Program to the university to help reduce the price of book rentals. This program decreases the cost of rentals by including the fees in tuition. They can pretty closely match the current prices of renting books with this program, according to Snyder.

The open forums are as much for the benefit of the university as they are for the students. It gets the information out to the students straight from the vendors. However, the university officials in charge of this process are still learning from them as well, according to Stock.

Students and faculty are encouraged to take a survey to provide feedback on this process. The link to the survey can be found at southeastbookstore.com. The survey will be available until midnight on March 10.