Coursepack store wraps up 1st semester

The Michigan Student Assembly's Student Coursepack Service sold its last coursepack for the term yesterday after its premiere in early January.

The assembly began the service as an experiment to decrease students' expenses by making coursepacks more affordable.

The SCS is an educational service, rather than a store or business, MSA Treasurer Bram Elias said.

"We don't sell coursepacks. We provide them at cost to students," said Elias, an LSA junior. He added that "our only mission is to make sure students get cheap coursepacks."

The store operated from MSA offices in the Michigan Union. Coursepacks for five class were available and about 150 students purchased coursepacks from SCS, Elias said.

Students who used SCS said they were happy with the results.

"They gave a nice binder, the copies were nice, it was cheap," LSA sophomore Libby Reece said.

Engineering sophomore Laura Carter agreed with Reece.

"I think it was a great idea," she said. A "coursepack at five bucks instead of 20 is really a great help."

History Prof. Regina Morantz-Sanchez decided to use the SCS instead of a private copy store company. Sanchez said she uses coursepacks in all of her classes and they can be very expensive.

"Students are paying to have access to reading that they should have access to," Morantz-Sanchez said.

Last year a similar coursepack from a private company cost about $60 to $70. "For a comparable coursepack," Sanchez said, MSA "was close to cutting (the price) in half."

Assembly members worked along with University Law professors to determine how MSA could provide coursepacks to students without violating copyright laws.

The assembly will supplement royalty costs, if revenue from the sale of coursepacks is not sufficient, during the first semesters of operation at the a non-profit service to keep it running.

The store "exceeded everyone's expectations," Elias said, adding that he hopes the coursepack store will return next term.

"I would have been really in trouble" if SCS was unsuccessful, Sanchez said. "I believed in it. I was willing to take the risk."

Although SCS is closed for the remainder of winter term, many patrons said they are hopeful it will return in the fall.

MSA opened the store with the help of the General Counsel's Office and the Office of the Vice President for Student Affairs. University officials and assembly members plan to work during the summer to reopen SCS and possibly expand the store, Elias said.

"It would be a benefit to everyone if more professors got their coursepacks there," Reece said.

Morantz-Sanchez said she informed her students about SCS so they knew the reasons Sanchez chose to use the service and also so they could pressure other professors to use SCS.

Several student said SCS was an effective project for MSA and expressed satisfaction that the assembly is actually accomplishing its goals.

On "two occasions people mentioned that this was the first time they saw their assembly do something for them," said Andy Coulouris, an LSA junior and SCS volunteer.

Coulouris, a former member of MSA, said that "delivering solid, tangible programs," should be a new direction for the assembly.

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