As a student at Wilfrid Laurier University, I spend hundreds of dollars per year on my text books. It should be no surprise to anyone familiar with the student lifestyle that as a group, we students tend to be short of money. The cash that we do have is generally obtained from some combination of scholarship programs, OSAP loans, and minimum-wage part-time jobs.

For some years now, I’ve been saving myself about five hundred dollars per year by purchasing my text books used from sellers on Amazon.ca. This year however, my attempts to save myself some rent money were foiled by the WLU Bookstore, a retail entity that sells text books and school supplies on campus.

For as long as I have been a student at Laurier, the bookstore has been responsible for releasing a list of required text books to students through its website and in-store kiosks about four weeks before the start of each new term. In previous years, this has listing included text title, author, and ISBN number, a kind of global tracking number for all books in circulation.

This combination of information has always given me the tools necessary to shop my book purchases around, while still ensuring that I got the correct editions of my text books, many of which change from year to year. This year however, the bookstore has changed its policy, and displays only the text title and price on student’s book lists, which is not enough information to be sure of an expensive online purchase.

Upon seeing that the ISBN number was lacking from the web front-end, I made a call to the bookstore to see if they would provide me with the necessary numbers over the phone. I spoke to the student manager of the bookstore, who told me in no uncertain terms that the new bookstore policy was to not display the ISBN numbers of texts online, because ‘students just take the numbers and buy their books elsewhere.’

Well that couldn’t be right. Wanting more information, I got in touch with a Ms. DaCosta, the head of bookstore operations at Wilfrid Laurier. When asked for the ISBN numbers, she gave me a slew of excuses, including a far fetched tale about their new computer system no longer tracking the number. Seeing as the ISBN number of a book is a unique identifier and also functions as a component of its UPC number, I seriously doubted her story. At the end of an in depth conversation, Ms. DaCosta suggested that I either come down to the bookstore and look up the ISBN numbers myself, or that I purchase the books online, get the numbers from the receipt, and then return the purchased books on the first day of classes.

Now let me take a moment to clarify something. As a consumer, I do not for one moment deny the retail bookstore its right to withhold information about its products from customers. However, since the bookstore is the only official source for the book list, and every student needs access to that list, I would like to see enough useful information on that list for students to be able to purchase their books wherever they see fit. If that means that the Bookstore does not get enough business from the students, they should respond by becoming more competitive in the marketplace, not by withholding necessary information from those students. I already pay thousands of dollars per year in tuition for the privilege of attending university. I should be free to purchase my books wherever it makes economic sense for me to do so.

Not satisfied with the excuses that I got from Ms. DaCosta, I contacted the purchaser for the bookstore, a Mr. Wayne Steffler and asked for some answers regarding the new policy. As his subordinate had, he gave me a slew of excuses for the new policy, and suggested that I wait until the first day of classes, when I would receive course outlines from all of my professors, which he assured me would contain ISBN numbers. On the first day of classes, it was no surprise to me that not one of my course outlines contained the information that I had requested.

In the end, I gave in and purchased all of my books at the WLU bookstore, simply because I ran out of time to fight for answers and needed to start reading for my classes. And so I have started the last term of my five excellent years at Wilfrid Laurier with a bullying from the school that has given me so much.

It turns out that the lowly student manager that I first spoke to on the phone might have been right. The bookstore seems to have changed their policy simply to force students to purchase books from them. As a retail outlet, they are entitled to protect their consumer base as much as possible, but as a university sponsored entity, and as the only official source for the book list, I think that they have gone too far. Nowhere in my agreement with the University is it stated that I must purchase my books through them at market or higher prices, especially when I could purchase them used for half the price and save myself the equivalent of a month’s worth of rent money. Unfortunately, without an ISBN number, I have no way to ensure that the text books that I purchase online will be the ones that I am required to have, and by the time that they show up at my door, it will be too late to do anything about the problem.

Edit: An excerpt of this post was published in the January 13, 2010 issue of the Wilfrid Laurier Cord student newspaper.