Word: cooped
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...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...
...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...