Bonnes Voyages
Cities I've spent significant amounts of time in, starting at Spring Break:
- Wherever Bridget lives (I'll call it 'New Jersey Suburbs')
- Newark NJ
- Amsterdam NL
- The Hague NL
- Rotterdam NL
- Heerjansdam NL
- Birmingham UK
- Syracuse NY
- Oneida NY
- Cleveland OH
- Mayfield Village OH
- Detroit MI
- Amsterdam NL (again)
- St. Petersburg RU
- Paris FR
Still Here?
OK short summary of the last 3.5 weeks:
- February 16th: blow up computer and nearly set off fire alarm.
- February 19th: Winterfest Olympics. (Kick 4ss and get a *cool* color t-shirt for once!)
- February 26th: buy motherboard, RAM, transplant processor and fix computer. Receive SimCity 4 Deluxe from Kaleena.
- February 27th and 28th: Play SimCity 4 while occasionally pondering how great it would be to do laundry or clean my room. Under no circumstance get any kind of work done.
Week 3: More Book Exchange Obsession
Yup so it looks like this semester is all about the Book Exchange. Funny thing is I'm not the one driving all of this attention. It started with John Kelly's article in the Colgate Maroon-news, two weeks ago. I put a copy up here (with permission). This was followed by a 'rebuttal' by Colgate Bookstore director Leslie Green Guilbault. It's available here at the Colgate Maroon-News website. I haven't asked permission to publish that here, and I'm a little pessimistic about the odds.
So yah, here's the response I wrote to last week's Letter to the Editor:
To the Editor:
This is a response to Leslie Guilbault’s letter in last week’s issue of the Colgate Maroon-News. In her letter, Guilbault outlines the merits of the Textbook Buyback program at the Colgate Bookstore. As the founder of the Book Exchange website, an alternative to Textbook Buyback, I feel I should point out the options that the Colgate Bookstore has to improve Textbook Buyback.
I think the single most important argument I can make here is that the Colgate Bookstore needs to give us more information. In my opinion, the Buyback program is not helping Colgate students as much as possible. It forces us to haul all of our books to downtown Hamilton, wait in line for up to an hour and then find out if our books are worth anything. Guilbault states that Buyback rates vary between 5% and 50%. That’s a difference between getting back $10 or $100 for $200 worth of books.
My proposed solution would be this: publish these numbers. Let students know what they can expect before they get in line each semester. Currently, the Colgate Bookstore website just has some general claims and statistics, similar to those stated in Guilbault’s letter. Why not publish real-time Buyback rates on there as well? That way, students would be able to make an informed decision. The Book Exchange already lets students compare offers between individual student sellers; there is no reason the Colgate Bookstore can’t compete using its own website.
That said, there is one point in Guilbault’s article that I would like to address directly. Guilbault states: “the Book Exchange’s website includes a page of lengthy disclaimers…” and “The Book Exchange operates on an ‘as is,’ or ‘buyer beware’ system.” I would argue that Book Exchange is based on common sense above anything else. The Book Exchange’s Terms of Service are actually very similar to those of most popular student websites and search engines. The terms are available at https://bookexchange.colgate.edu/terms.php. Feel free to have a look.
There are valid arguments to make for both the Book Exchange website and Textbook Buyback program. Clearly I’m slightly biased towards the Book Exchange. Still, I believe that having both services around generates healthy competition that will ultimately benefit students and the University.
The editors went easy on me; they only added one error 
The Maroon-News has the article here. Note the extravagant title there too...
Dude... where's my free time?
Had some snow last week, as y'all can see... It's still pretty cold out, but fortunately I have plenty of work to keep me indoors. Some interesting things happening in the Book Exchange department; it looks like my last post's title was pretty predictive. More on that Friday though.
Week 1: Colgate Book Exchange runs into more trouble...
I've only been back at Colgate for a week and I'm already buried in work... it's pretty amazing. To summarize: my classes this semester look hard, it's cold, wet and slippery out here, I managed to sell a bunch of books through the Colgate Book Exchange and in between getting buried with work I had a decent amount of fun.
My trip here went pretty much as scheduled. The only close call was at Newark, where I had exactly one hour to get through customs and into my plane to Syracuse. I actually managed this with about 10 minutes to spare, but well... let's just say that there was a lot of running involved. The fact that my luggage arrived with me in Syracuse is a miracle.
After my arrival in Syracuse I was met by Linda, Gordon and Kaleena. (Thanks for picking me up Linda! ). We had a late dinner at Wegmans. After Kaleena was done with a 'Minor' shopping spree, we went straight to Colgate. I believe I fell asleep shortly after that.
My first week at Colgate was fun. I saw Elektra (movie), which was decent. Kaleena and I celebrated a (monthly) anniversary as well as a (yearly) birthday this week, which warranted going to the Colgate Inn and the Hamilton Inn, respectively. Both nights were a lot of fun and... well... filling.
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