Flying the Coop

Harvard students are nothing if not resourceful. Little surprise, then, when last year around this time some enterprising members of the Undergraduate Council (UC) decided once and for all to mend a long-festering, but otherwise unaddressed problem: course books are expensive.

And thus Crimsonreading.org was born—a Web site where students can compare the cost of required class texts across a handful of Internet vendors as well as the putatively more pricy Coop. This year, however, presented a previously unencountered difficulty. Many course syllabi, typically posted on the Internet in the week or two prior to Shopping Period, did not appear on-line until the day before classes begun. Bereft of syllabi, Crimson Reading had to resort to extreme measures to acquire the lists of required texts for each course.

Among the most controversial methods of information-gathering, for both Crimson Reading affiliates and cost-conscious students, were clandestine missions to the Coop during which they could copy the course books’ ISBN numbers. The Coop responded with a crackdown: One student was expelled for transcribing ISBNs and several others prompted the threat of police intervention.

Naturally, Crimson Reading and its backers at the UC—along with many empathetic students—were furious at the Coop’s provocation. In no time, allegations abounded. The Coop was “infringing upon [students’] rights as consumers,” jealously guarding its “monopoly,” and “tarnishing [its] image in the mind of the College community,” one commentator lamented. The latent anti-Coop sentiment was clear: Harvard students deserved to pay less for course books, and the campus bookstore should not stand in their way.

This sentiment, however, both vainly ignores the value of the Coop’s unique service as well as risks making students sound like spoiled brats. Indeed, the Coop’s markup on course books is noticeable if not obscene: an abbreviated visit to the textbook bazaar will sufficiently validate many of the complaints. The discrepancy between publishers’ list and the Coop’s retail prices may often call into question at least the business sense, if not the integrity, of the bookstore’s proprietors. If nearly everyone acknowledges the price-gouging, why would any student shop there—and, therefore, how could the Coop make any profit?

Well for all the anti-Coop carping about “community,” the critics fail to realize the bookstore’s rightful place in it: to procure the obscure titles students need, and sell them in a convenient, centralized location. The Coop’s mission indeed includes the intent “to serve the Harvard community,” but also, as those selective readers may not have not noticed, the stipulation that its “operations should be profitable.” The Coop may charge too much, but it is not meant to run a charity. Certainly, for providing the service of ensuring your professors’ preferred editions are on the shelves waiting for you, the Coop is justified, in theory at least, in taking a little off the top for itself. In practice, though, if this margin seemed excessive to enough students, then a massive exodus from the Coop would have occurred. And, therefore, one should not impugn the Coop for not making the job of their competitors—the ISBN note-takers—any easier.

More importantly, however, this crusade for cheaper textbooks threatens to perpetuate an unbecoming stereotype of Harvard students.

There is no shame in thrift—and a well-informed consumer will shop around and compare the wares and prices of various vendors. But some students’ indignation at the very thought of paying per semester, at most, a couple hundred dollars over the list price of books seems oddly disproportionate. Many students are indeed on financial aid, and very few have unlimited budgets, but, in terms of the total cost of a Harvard education, the cost of books alone appears quite paltry. Strangely, one never hears nearly as much bitterness over the obscene growth rate of tuition—money spent largely on ever-increasing appendages to an administrative infrastructure whose value and necessity is left unquestioned. Any student who cannot front that extra sum out of pocket likely has their tuition and board remitted; a summer job or low-interest loan can painlessly cover the difference.

The anti-Coop sentiment furthermore underlines an unjustified sense of entitlement. Students implicitly understand the cost of comparison shopping, of compiling the list of needed books (either via syllabi or illegal note-taking at the Coop) and trolling though sites like Amazon—explaining why many still end up shopping at the Coop. Yet since Crimson Reading had streamlined and greatly expedited bargain hunts, many now find it unreasonable that the Coop has complicated the process by forbidding the collection of ISBNs. In short, if you do not want to undergo the burdens of comparison shopping—sans the shortcuts of Crimson Reading and taking notes at the Coop—then you must pay a small sum extra. Life is about trade-offs: It is selfish and often unreasonable to expect that you can have everything. And in a comparatively menial matter as shopping for course books, such self-righteous indignation seems simply silly.

The complaints about the Coop, in some sense justified, nevertheless risk bringing dishonor to Harvard students: by not honorably recognizing the Coop’s convenience which its inflated prices make possible, and also by claiming for us the title of petty and parsimonious penny-pinchers.

Christopher B. Lacaria ’09 is history concentrator in Kirkland House. His column appears on alternate Mondays.