Best attendance

[Knightstalker]

At NJCU they charge 5.00 for adults, 2.00 for students of other schools and NJCU students and local high school, elementary students are free with ID.  NJCU gives a ticket stub and the people coming to the game have to go through a turnstyle.  We usually have a better crowd on Wednesday than we do for Saturday nights, too much going on in the area on Saturday, although I always found that I had time to go to and 8:00 PM game and then head out for the night.

Of course at Rowan they charged me 5.00 last season for my daughter to come into the game, and she was only three at the time.

[Jonny Utah]

I had an idea....

What if a school said that at halftime of a basketball game there was to be a raffle where the winner gets free books for a semester from the bookstore.  I always thought that would get admissions up for a basketball game especially.......

Even if it was like 100 bucks off or something like that I think a lot of students would go for it.

[Ryan Scott (Hoops Fan)]

Nobody uses the bookstore anymore (at least I hope not--it's way cheaper online).

[David Collinge]

Wooster charges admission, uses paper tickets (but no turnstile; you pass between two long tables and surrender your ticket), and has used the "free books for a semester" idea on occasion (seems to me that it is usually connected with the making of a half-court shot).  The more common raffles are for team memorabilia (signed basketballs, etc.) or free pizza.  Raffles are usually fund-raisers for the charitable beneficiaries of the two holiday tournaments, both(?) of which are when the students are on break; I can't recall a raffle during conference season that might have boosted the student attendance. 

The most effective way to bring the Wooster students (a/k/a "Moore's Maniacs") out is to offer them a chance to root against Wittenberg. 

[diehardfan]

Let alone actual tickets at all.  I've been to a lot of d3 games, but outside of the NCAA tournament, I've never been handed or asked to produce a paper ticket anywhere.

That's funny... I have a ton of tickets from d3games that I've saved. Must be a NE vs MW thing.

[Gregory Sager]

Nobody uses the bookstore anymore (at least I hope not--it's way cheaper online).

NPU's bookstore (operated by the school's parent denomination, in a building rented from the school) will close its doors for good this month. Both undergrad and graduate students will now be ordering their textbooks online through Follett.

I wonder how many other schools have closed their bookstores in recent years?

[diehardfan]

Wheaton students will probably never be able to purchase all of their class materials online, most profs have a college print shop made bound books full of "articles used permission" and class notes.

Sigh, I always thought the smell of the back room at the Wheaton bookstore, where they sell the text books, was magical.... it smelled liked learning. It's a shame so many kids will never experience that.

Plus, all that wasteful shipping of used books all over the country? Or students not using used books at all? Sad, sad, sad.

[Greek Tragedy]

I wonder how many other schools have closed their bookstores in recent years?

Last time I checked, and it's been awhile (maybe PointSpecial can help), but at least at UWSP, books are free.  You go to the bookstore and bascially rent them out, returning them at the end of the semester or buying them used if you think they're important enough or if you just want to put them on your bookshelf so you look smart.

Pointer tickets are kind of steep.  Women's games are $6.00 and men's are $7.00 (the price for success).  Weekend double headers are nice where you can go to the women's game first and then the men's game for $9.50 (yeah, they just dont' make it easy and charge $9.00, they want that extra 50 cents).  I've been to other WIAC schools for weekend doubleheaders and they only charge on game price, then again, the Point women play in Berg and the men play down the hall in Quandt.

In the past when I've gone, Lawrence has always been free, but since they are in demand now, heard they might start charging.

Oh yeah, some of those half time raffles are totally rigged.  I went to Lakeland and during the course of the basketall season, you wouldn't believe how many times one guy "won" the raffle and had a chance at a half court shot to win one round trip ticket to anywhere in the continental US or whatever they were giving away. 

[Greek Tragedy]

Plus, all that wasteful shipping of used books all over the country? Or students not using used books at all? Sad, sad, sad.

Isn't that better than students not using NEW books at all? 

[diehardfan]

barely...

-reusing textbooks is smart, because it's cheaper, and means that the text book isn't going to go into a landfill and add to the country's landfill problem (or a book burning bonfire thing like some guy friends of mine did once) 
-using text books in general is smart cause you may actually learn something

hence, not doing either makes you stupid and wasteful 

[diehardfan]

or if you just want to put them on your bookshelf so you look smart

This is what I did... I didn't return a single book. I tend to write comments in the margins, like "haha" or "this guy is crazy" and totally didn't want people to read them.  Plus my science text books were useful later on when I was doing research projects and needed to pad my sources list by pulling random quotes out of them.  I did let friends borrow them though so they got reused in a sense....

Plus, I totally will still pull out something random like my Art Survey book to find out the name of that artist I liked, or my French book so I can look up a word when I'm writing some random phrase on a webpage in French.

Considering how much money I spent in college on books, however, I'm not sure this makes me all that smart. 

[David Collinge]

Making hundreds of individual deliveries of textbooks from a distant point (perhaps thousands of miles distant) uses considerably more energy (and generates considerably more pollution) than making one large delivery of textbooks to one or two local central locations (i.e., bookstores) for local delivery.  That's true whether the textbooks are used or new; an added advantage of used textbooks is realized if they can be re-used in the local area, thereby avoiding virtually all of the costs (including externalities) of transportation.  From an environmental standpoint, keeping the local bookstores open to provide textbooks, used if possible, tends to be the preferred solution.

[diehardfan]

Exactly! That's exactly what I meant, though I obviously didn't explain it well. I knew I liked you for some reason. 

Wheaton students sell their used books back to the bookstore, and then they're used the next semester. If the bookstore stops selling books, the students are probably going to be putting them on ebay or something, and may end up getting shipped across the country. The same is true for the new book deliveries to individual people.

In addition to my love of organic foods, I have a quirky tendancy to always look at the labels of everything I buy, to see how locally the products are made and packaged, and buy whichever ones are the most local. It takes me longer to shop, but I think it's important. It drives me nuts that something like this would start happening around the nation, making our silly cheap goods driven global economy even more enviromentally destructive.... haha... okay... need to get... off... soapbox. 

[Mr. Ypsi]

Publishers (quite understandably) hate used books, which is the primary reason texts come out in new editions every 2-3 years.  For courses like Social Problems that makes SOME sense in order to stay current, but they completely tip their hand when basic Statistics books are revised just as frequently - the mean and standard deviation do NOT change every 2-3 years!

But they will make JUST enough changes (topics shifted to a different chapter, differences in pagination, different practice problems, etc.) that a student with an 'old' edition is at a real disadvantage.  (Since our local bookstores are pretty good about finding out-of-print editions, my usual student-friendly solution is to skip every-other new edition - students can buy used books for 4-5 years, instead of 2-3.)

[Gregory Sager]

Making hundreds of individual deliveries of textbooks from a distant point (perhaps thousands of miles distant) uses considerably more energy (and generates considerably more pollution) than making one large delivery of textbooks to one or two local central locations (i.e., bookstores) for local delivery.  That's true whether the textbooks are used or new; an added advantage of used textbooks is realized if they can be re-used in the local area, thereby avoiding virtually all of the costs (including externalities) of transportation.  From an environmental standpoint, keeping the local bookstores open to provide textbooks, used if possible, tends to be the preferred solution.

NPU (and, presumably, other schools that have abandoned the traditional bookstore model) didn't simply abandon the efficiencies of a central textbook transfer point. As I understand it, students order their textbooks online through Follett at www.efollett.com. Follett ships the textbooks to NPU from their local warehouse here in Chicagoland -- which must be substantial, since a large number of local colleges (including Elmhurst, Dominican, Aurora, North Central, Lake Forest, Lewis, etc., among others) also use Follett as their textbook distributor. They're delivered to a new distribution node being set up on campus, underneath the Viking Lounge in the building that houses the school's gym. I presume that the same procedure works in reverse in terms of the students selling their used books back to Follett.

I'm not exactly sure how the apparel and gifts aspect of the college bookstore will work, but I think it'll largely be handled the same way, via online purchase. NPU doesn't have merchandise offered online via efollett.com yet, but I noticed in the Illinois pulldown that Elmhurst, North Central, Lake Forest, etc., are selling their merch this way.