One student sold her Office 2007 book to the bookstore for $67. Another student buys a used Office 2007 at the same bookstore for $101. That’s over a 33%, or $34 mark-up on just one of the many books our bookstore buys and sells to us.One thought may be to just not buy books from the bookstore.
However, when you are dependent on financial aid, the bookstore is your only option. So, when you think about it, this hurts the students who can afford it the least.
Now, this is just the mark-up on just this one book. What is the mark-up on other used books?
To answer this question I called the manager of all the bookstores, Beth Phillips, once, but got no response. I then e-mailed her, and cc’ed the e-mails to Chief Financial Officer Michael Sargent, who is her supervisor, this time, making a formal open records request.
I have yet to hear from either one.
This is a problem because MATC accepts money from the government to help them. However, it seems they don’t want to accept the rules that now follow.
By accepting this money, they are required to follow open records laws. The reason is so that public institutions are transparent to the citizens who provide the funds through their taxes.
“Effective citizen oversight of the workings of government and government employees is essential to democratic government and confidence in that government. Access to public records by citizens is a vital aspect of this principle,” said Wisconsin’s Attorney General, J.B. Van Hollen in Wisconsin’s Public Records Law Compliance Guide.
MATC even has an open records policy that closely parallels Wisconsin open record laws, yet I was still ignored.
At the time of this article, a letter will have been sent to Janice Falkenberg, Vice President, General Counsel, bypassing both Sargent and Phillips.
To make a request according to the policy, as the policy states, all requests must be “routed to” the Vice President, General Counsel.
Although I understood this, it felt better to go through the department itself. This way, the department would know what is being requested so they can get a head start gathering the information together. They can forward the request on, and respond to me, letting me know that’s what was done. Instead, I got no response.
The lack of response causes the concern that this will be a similar struggle to get these records as it has been with getting incident reports.
In spite of having an open records policy, it seems that MATC would rather not release information than give it out.
In fact, I didn’t receive the open records policy until months after requesting copies of incident reports. This happened even though the policy states:
The official notice of the procedures for the release of public records shall be prominently displayed at all campus locations and made available on request to any member of the public upon demand.
It seems that the policy isn’t being followed in a number of ways. One major way is having the policy displayed in any “prominently” or noticeable way.
I haven’t seen it anywhere at the Downtown Milwaukee or at any other campus.
What’s the point in having a policy if it isn’t being followed?
When it was finally shared with me, I was given a link to where it is on MATC’s webpage.
To help you find it, it’s under the “General Counsel” section, which is under “Administration,” which can be found under the “Other Visitors” tab on the home page. Did you get all that?
Somehow, this is defined as “prominently.”
An even more interesting experience is just how many employees are seemingly unaware of the policy or what it says even though it states:
It is further directed that all employees of the district be informed of the requirements of the Wisconsin Public Records and property law and the provision of this policy.
Perhaps now employees know of the policy. And maybe because they now know it, I will soon have the answer to the question of what other books are marked up at.
However, if nothing else, I’ve helped fulfill the policy’s requirement to be “prominently displayed” by providing portions to read, and where to find it.
It’s not quite the same as posting it by registration or some other area students are commonly found, but it is a good first step.
