Dear Alicia Hennessey,

After your several notes and urgings about getting book orders in, I find I must respond. And I must say how much I regret what you are doing. You claim to be looking out for the financial interests of the students, but please admit that the bookstore will take a significant cut in the sales. The hype is getting annoying: you send us several e-mails urging us to get our orders in long before the July date when you will actually send orders to publishers. And long before faculty have had the chance to evaluate the texts they have used and make decisions during the months of May and June about whether these texts should be used again in their courses. Many of us need this time, but you have created remarkable pressures not to think or reflect carefully: you offer catered treats to departments with "on time" book orders; offer gifts to secretarties of departments who comply in order to get the secretaries to hassle and harangue faculty. You publish the names of departments who have complied. And it has reached the point where certain department heads, for reasons I cannot fathom, are imposing sanctions on faculty if their book orders are not submitted by your deadline.

Students have the right to sell their books, but I feel they should not be unduly tempted. I believe they should keep their college books, and that as years pass they will find them a real resource as they incorporate what they have learned here into the rest of their lives. I still have and value many of my old college texts.

You have every right to exert pressure and to bribe people over this issue, I realize. But what is permissible and what is conducive to a campus concerned with scholarly and academic questions is quite something else. We deserve better from a university bookstore.

Bill Harman






William Harman, Head
Department of Philosophy and Religion (# 2753)
The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga
232 E Holt Hall // 615 McCallie Avenue
Chattanooga, Tennessee 37403
(423) 425-4336  // fax (423)425-4153

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