The Justice

It's time to bring our bookstore up to standard. It's dinky and unattractive, and there isn't much reason to go there if not to buy textbooks.

Besides having more school-themed products, most other schools of Brandeis' caliber carry more stock in general-more books, more commodities, more items that their students will actually use.

Some professors have stopped ordering books through the bookstore, choosing instead to have students buy from Back Pages Books, a local store run by a Brandeis alumnus.

We can't all be the Harvard Book Store, but we can start carrying books that aren't textbooks and magazines and editions authored by Brandeis alumni and professors.

Steady donor Carl J. Shapiro just gave us over $14 million to build a new admissions building. But the bookstore is where all the prospective students and their families go to pick up their sweatshirts and bobble-heads after they finish tromping about the admissions building. What sort of impression do we want to make on them?

Last year was Brandeis' biggest fundraising year ever. We took in no less than $90.4 million in cash gifts. Over $10 million went into capital funds, for the construction of new buildings, and about $35 million went into our endowment, according to Senior Vice President of Institutional Advancement Nancy Winship. Then we have "unrestricted funds," which pay for everything from mowing the lawn to academic programs and aren't earmarked for a particular purpose.

This page argues that the University should put some of this money to work by doing for the bookstore what it did for the C-store. We can rebuild it. We have the ability. Make it better, bigger snazzier.

As is, the bookstore is no more than a textbook provider, says Prof. Caren Irr (ENG), and as such, it does what it's supposed to do.

But that's not enough. We need a venue in which our proud parents and alumni-not to mention our loyal students-can buy truckloads of blue-and-white, owl-themed merchandise. Where's our school spirit?

And even if a new or expanded bookstore isn't feasible, there are improvements that can be made to our existing bookstore.

As Irr points out, the bookstore often seems understaffed, especially during the first few weeks of school. It could also stand to carry more in the way of sundries-a better selection of stationary and bookbags, more office supplies, lighters and so on. Why waste shelf space on a Brandeis golf ball? And its Web site? It's not as if we don't have room to improve.

As is, this store is the Rocky V of college bookstores, and it shouldn't be. It's getting us nowhere fast.

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