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Hitting the books; possibly with a baseball bat

      

Liam Britten

editor in chief

© one deserves to have their heart

broken over the magical time of year

that is the winter holidays. The days
of turkey and presents and rum and eggnog are
too precious to be soiled by life’s inequities,
but alas, my heart was shattered into a million
pieces on a cold day in December.

I still feel sad and angered over the cruel

deed done to me, but I take some solace in the
fact that many of you good readers probably

suffered under the same woman I did—the clerk

at the Douglas College bookstore.

Melodrama aside, I was pretty
disappointed when I went to this year’s
textbook buyback at the bookstore. I had 20
textbooks with me, which I had owned between
eight months to two years. I have always taken
meticulous care of my textbooks so condition
was never an issue. Of those 20 textbooks,
only three were bought back by the bookstore,
netting me a grand total of — wait for it—eight
bucks even.

Amazing. What a hustle, eh? I might as
well have burned those books in my fireplace,
because according to the bookstore, once that

for students buying books. The clerk started
scanning all my books and I didn’t even realize
my mistake until I looked the cash register’s
display and saw that they wanted me to pay
$748.96. I knew I wasn’t going to make enough
money to retire with from the buyback, but I
hoped my profits would be better than -$748.96.

But think about that disparity in price for a
second, from $748.96 to eight dollars; not only
does that represent a 98.9 per cent loss of value
over the course of eight to 24 months, but the
bookstore was more than willing to make me
pay for books they wouldn’t even accept back
into their stock. I’m sure I’m not the only one
who sees this as being a little ridiculous.

Yes, I know editions of textbooks come
and go, but in this modern age of computers
and the Internet and such and such, can’t those
barcode scanners detect what books are being
returned, see if other institutions need or want
them and then direct us starving students where
to mail them for a buyback price that isn’t an
insult? Hell, my local library can request books
and materials from other libraries; can’t all
these post-secondary bookstores get together
and do the same?

Oh, well; I may not have made any real
money back, but at least I still have 17 pieces of
good kindling left.

 

 

 

A record-breaking semester for The Other Press

More stories about the College than ever before

By Mark Fisher

t the end of last April, The Other

Press took a student survey to see

what students thought about the
amount of College-related content in The
Other Press. While the majority of students
felt that we had a sufficient amount, a large
portion of the respondents (42 per cent)
said we should have more, so we made that
one of our main goals for the future. I’m
happy to say that in the Fall 2009 semester
we reached an all-time high for publishing
Douglas College-related content, reaching an
impressive average of over nine stories per
issue. You can see the breakdown chart next
to this article.

The opinions, arts, and sports sections
each far surpassed the previous amount of
Ccllege coverage from the previous semester.
I’m really impressed at the section editors
commitment to finding a story about the
college to report every week. News continued
to be just as solid as it was in 2008-2009.

As happy as we are to reach this new
level of college coverage, we hope to go
even further in the future. If you’re reading

this, no matter if you’re a student, a teacher,
or college staff/administration, if you know
about something going on at the College that
would be of interest to readers of The Other
Press, now or anytime in the future, please get
in touch with one our editors so that we can
do a story on it. You can find their contact info
in any issue of the paper.

And while we’d like to cover everything
newsworthy that goes on at the College, our
editors and contributors are students too
and they have to balance their time at the
paper with their studies, so we’re always
looking for more students who are interested
in what’s going on at the College to help us
cover what’s going on. Come to one of our
weekly meetings that held in room 1020 every
Monday at 6 p.m., or e-mail the section editor
that you’re interested in writing for if you
can’t be there at that time.

Though I’ve stepped down as the paper’s
business manager, I’ll still be writing for the
paper from time to time while I’m finishing
my degree at Douglas. And I hope every
student with an interest in writing contributes
to the paper at some point during their time at
Douglas College.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

textbook leaves the door, it’s worth about as Your friend in high fidelity,
much as kindling. Liam Britten
What really got me steamed is how much Editor in chief

those textbooks were worth in the first place. I The Other Press

got into the wrong checkout line accidentally

when I entered the bookstore and got in the line
Issue # Stories about the College
Issue 1 rb
Issue 2 8
Issue 3 7
Issue 4 6
Issue 5 6 Left: The amount of College
ans 10 content produced by The

Other Press, issue by is-
et _ sue. This includes content
Issue 8 8 from every section: news,
ere - opinions, ive arts and
Issue 10 il
Issue 11 il
Issue 12 8
Issue 13 12
Issue 14 8
Total 127
Average per issue: 9.07