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The Daily Tar Heel

Letter: Does Barnes & Noble care about students?

TO THE EDITOR:

One year after the university’s corporatizers predicted that Barnes & Noble would raise more money for student scholarships than the now-defunct, university-owned Bull’s Head Bookshop and Daily Grind coffee shop did, let us examine how Barnes & Noble does this, and at what cost. 

I was a student employee at the Student Stores for three weeks this summer. I was grateful for the job, and that my transgendered identity was affirmed. 

And yet I was also disillusioned after I learned how Barnes & Noble generates the aforementioned operational savings. 

A Student Stores student employee who had worked previous back-to-school rushes in the textbook department told me that, when they were university-owned, the stores honored the university’s $10+-per-hour minimum wage. 

Now, as a new temporary employee, I was earning the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour under the Barnes & Noble regime. 

Apparently, the company is so much better at raising money for student scholarships because it is far better than the previous, university-owned stores, at exploiting its workers, most of whom are students. 

And since scholarships and entry-level service jobs tend to go disproportionately to poorer students, there stands to be substantial overlap between scholarship holders and Student Stores student employees. 

The University’s corporatization moguls are therefore robbing Peter to pay Peter, cutting students’ pay to give them more generous scholarships. 

All this leads me to question more than ever what lies closer to university leaders’ hearts: student welfare or a corporation’s bottom line.

Sara Maxwell

Doctoral Candidate

Geography

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