Oracle Online

This is the height of doublespeak. Why, while praising the job Young has done, would anyone look to replace him?

This is the third college I’ve attended. I hear a lot of people complaining about the bookstore. Yet relative to any other college bookstore I’ve seen or bought books from, Hamline’s does an amazing job of serving the students.

My previous college, Normandale, had a good bookstore in my opinion. Yet the only used books they had were books they had bought back the previous semester, usually no more than 10 or so. I was amazed to find the Hamline bookstore providing entire classes with used books. Everything I can see about Hamline’s bookstore is as good or better than any other store.

So Hamline administration’s sudden decision not to renew Young’s contract, inexplicably circumventing the bookstore advisory committee, is peculiar. What’s going on?

The same Oracle article got it right when it said that “it seems that this move is more about institutionalizing an effective process of university management than about improving the bookstore’s methods of management.” Although I would disagree about “effective,” this sounds right. Hamline’s management definitely has a corporate, “institutionalized” feel.

For instance, the bookstore-who decided this? President Hanson? The Board of Trustees? No one knows. We are a small enough campus that there is no excuse for this shameful and cowardly hiding. Many of the decisions on this campus are made anonymously.

Who bought the President’s mansion on Summit Avenue? Who decided that this was more important than fixing some of our decrepit buildings, or giving our faculty a raise, or providing more financial aid, or any of the many other ways the $2 million or so it allegedly cost to buy and fix it up? I certainly don’t know who made the decision, nor do I believe any students’ concerns were addressed in this instance, or that of the bookstore, or in any instance I am aware of.

Yes, we occasionally get surveys asking us what we think. But these look more like the administration trying to find out what we want only so they know how to sell us on what they’re already intending to do, just like political polls in election years. If the Hamline administration was actually in touch with the student body they wouldn’t need phony, Target-style surveys.

But they aren’t in touch. Hamline administration exists in a separate world from Hamline students. Some of our administrators appear to be much more concerned with our image, our U.S. News & World Report college rankings, and our stock portfolio than about the students on this campus, and they make decisions accordingly.

For instance, the bookstore decision. What would happen if we replace Dave Young with one of the two chains that run most college bookstores? If we get a corporate chain, we will see many fewer used books, prices will go up, service will go down, and it will be run by someone in, say, New York, instead of someone at Hamline. There will be virtually no transparency and accountability, but our administration, which apparently despises transparency and accountability, will profit (but not students).

This suggests what our administration’s ultimate decision on the bookstore will be. If it replaces Young with a chain under the false guise of “efficiency,” the Hamline administration will prove that it serves not the students, but an empty image and a corporate ideal.