The Stetson Reporter

J5LJLJE_JLJSLjaLJL life | Several films debuted over the holidays, including Dreamwork's animated movie, The Prince of Egypt.' This telling of the Exodus story, starring the vocal talents of Val Kilmer, Sandra Bullock, Ralph Fiennes, and Michelle Pfeiffer, is both an achievement in animation, and a sign that animation truly is not just for kids anymore. [ Life, page 6a ] wed 13 j a n • 9 9 issue 14volume 111 BUYING: Students crowded the bookstore on Sunday afternoon to buy books and other school supplies for the Spring semester, photo by jeff hidek Online booksellers offer an alternative to the bookstore by sara cotner | Some things about college will never change. Cafeteria food will always be a chief complaint. There will never be enough parking spaces. Eight o'clock classes will always be too early. And students will always have to buy books at the start - of every semester. However, Internet companies are beginning to change how those books are purchased. Companies like Amazon.com and barnesandnoble.com offer new ways to shop for books. With increasing options, students are no longer required to look to the school bookstore for the most convenient or inexpensive shopping. Although purchasing books online does have drawbacks, sites like VarsityBooks.com, Amazon.com, and efollett.com provide students with alternatives to standing in lines and searching shelves. These companies offer textbooks and soft cover books used in college courses. VarsityBooks.com, for example, offers over 400,000 titles used in colleges and universities nationwide, according to Eric Kuhn, the company's CEO. At that site, books can be searched for using title, author, ISBN, or keyword. Further, course number and professor's name can be used to search the specific booldists at 58 schools, ranging from Lexington Community College to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Stetson's booklist is not currently offered on the site, but students ' can still search for their books there. Internet booksellers seek to provide lower prices than traditional bookstores by decreasing the amount of overhead associated with selling books. For example, the Stetson bookstore must pay to ship books from the supplier to campus and then pay to ship unsold books back to the supplier. Other overhead costs include employees, as well as costs associated with purchasing and maintaining cash registers, said Brenda Galley, manager of the bookstore. Online companies can ship directly from distributor to buyer. The decreased costs associated with running Internet companies can lead to a reduction in prices. VarsityBooks.com asserts that its prices are usually 15-40 percent cheaper than other booksellers, while books from Amazon.com are discounted up to 40 percent. The Stetson bookstore remains competitive with Internet companies by keeping prices as low as possible. The bookstore sells books at the suggested retail price set by the publisher, which is usually done for "mass market paperbacks," said Galley. For other books, like hardcover textbooks, the price at which the bookstore purchased the book is 80 percent of the final cost to students. For example, a $10 book would sell for $ 12.50 to students. Used books are set at 25 percent below the price of the new book. Used textbooks at the Stetson bookstore are often the same price or cheaper than new books at VarsityBooks.com. For example, a used copy of The World's Religions sells for $ 11.25 at the bookstore — the exact price of a new version from VarsityBooks.com — and for $12 at Amazon.com. A used copy of Norton's Anthology of World Masterpieces at the bookstore, though, is $4.55 cheaper than a new copy from VarsityBooks.com. However, used books are not always available at the bookstore. For example, the used price for Understanding English Grammar is $39.50 at the Stetson bookstore, although no used copies are on the shelf. Therefore, the VarsityBooks.com price of $47.60 for a new version of the book is ultimately less expensive then the bookstore's selling price of $52.50 for a new copy. An additional cost associated solely with pur- [ see BOOKS, page 2a ] internet booksellers seek to provide lower prices than traditional bookstores by decreasing the amount of.. ..; overhead associated with selling books. For example, the Stetsqn bookstore must pay to ship books from the supplier to campus and then pay to ship unsold books back to the supplier., THE END OF BEAUTY p O K M B JORIE GRAHAM Prices do not include shipping (for online merchants) or tax {for the bookstore). Our full comparison and methodology are on page 2a. ;; Bookstore • Amazon.com ;' VarsityBooks.com 7S; i^ssm. WStUMuBEStSEUtX TONGUE „ &OISH&H0W 1 ITGOTTOWrWAr $14 $11.20 $10.50 $14.95 $11.96 $11.21 $69.50 $74 $62.90 $12.50 $10 $9.38 Officephones switched to system by julie gowan | After students left for winter break, CIT and BellSouth converted administrative offices to the new phone network system that students have had since the beginning of Fall semester. In addition to these offices being able to dial anywhere on campus using the last four digits, all university offices are now equipped with voice mail. "Faculty and staff were offered a series of training sessions — 25 in a five-day period — starting the second week of December to give them exposure to the new system," said Jim Snyder, CIT's director of technology. "There was a good turn out for the sessions and a good representation from most departments, but we understood that some faculty and staff couldn't be present due to class schedules and the sessions will be offered once again after the new semester begins," said Snyder. The switchover to the new system not only connects university offices with student phones and voice mail, it also offers additional features as caller id, conference calling, and call transfers. "Faculty and staff voice mail is activated now and this is what I think they were looking toward most. Student voice mail is on our agenda next, but we really don't have a time frame for that just yet. We want to make sure this transition is 100 percent perfect, but we're working with Residential Life and looking at possible times to complete that part of the oi Q > "We did face some challenges and issues with the project and typical of a cut this size. We did have some problems with the dial- up system in reaction to the switch over to the digital system." project. We will be communicating to the students when we will begin work on student voice mail, said Snyder. CIT and BellSouth worked cooperatively in switching over the new system over the holiday break, so "it wouldn't interrupt the students during the year when trying to get hold of faculty and staff. Which in a project this size we tried to eliminate that traffic, so we could complete the project of the switchover," said Snyder. With the incorporation of the new telephone system that has only been up and running for just a few weeks, CIT hopes everyone will welcome the new system and the advantages it brings to Stetson, Snyders said. However, some complications did arise with the switchover to the new fiberoptic cabling telephone system. "We did face some challenges and issues with the project and typical of a cut this size. We did have some problems with the dial-up system in reaction to the switch over to the digital system," said Snyder. Some students have been unable to dial into the network. "I'm a commuter student and one of my classes last semester relied heavily on the Internet to get assignments and study guides; I use the dial-up system from my house. But when I tried to get access to the system over the holiday break to check my e.mail and look at different class statuses I was unable to connect for longer than five minutes for over two weeks," said Luke Gowan. "We have corrected the problem with the dial up system, though," Snyder said. "The banks are set up in a different from the digital and the cross over created the problem, but it has been resolved and is up and running good now." All calls concerning problems with the new system are being filtered into a system of priorities from low to high. CIT and BellSouth are working together to correct the problems. "It's not necessarily CIT's fault for our problems. I blame BellSouth mostly. We had a system that we were comfortable and adapted to, but now everything has become more complicated not easier; we have less phone lines and numbers have changed that we haven't been identified with," said one administrative assistant who asked not to be identified. "We had to run a lot of lines and identifying cables in order to restore fax lines and create new lines for offices where old modem lines were dead due to the switch over, but we're going through and taking care of all of them," said Snyder. "We had to wait two years until the campus infrastructure was solid and ready for the switch. We are the one of the first institutions with new technology and there will be more to come with the PBX system," said Snyder. Julie Gowan is the News editor of The Reporter. A prayer for the dead winter term month reporter staff editorial | As we return to campus after three weeks of catching up on missed episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and indulging in home-cooked meals, we need to stop for a moment of silence in acknowledgment of what we could've been doing. As students at the university five years ago, we would've had the opportunity to attend a special Winter Term. During this four-week term in January, we could have taken one class for academic credit. The classes, however, weren't your standard Sociology 101 or Intro to Geology. They were courses, like the History of Baseball, with a very narrow, but interesting, focus. [ read this story in Forum, page 4a ] Celebrities are the focus of new novel BY ANDY DEHNART | You get OUt of class, gO to the Hollis Center. You flash your ID, grab a towel, get on the treadmill, walk three, maybe four, miles. No muscle escapes attention. Later, you go to the mall. You charge your parents' credit card with purchases from the Gap, Express, Structure, A&F. You want perfectly-defined muscles and unblemished skin and attention and ultimately a life of celebrity, even though you won't admit that. Why? And for what? That's ostensibly the question Bret Easton Ellis asks in his latest novel, Glamorama. [ see article in Life, page 6a ] Crew prep begins ROWING: Stetson Crew held their annual Row-A-Thon on Saturday. Crew returned a week early to start training for their spring season, photo by julie gowan [ read this story in Sports, page 7a ] «m~Xti# {0g Sif5|"t,: tS£^{Stf!|€l7^M^^^ Mp*n*fim. ^m^Af^WMki §r«V® "Woifcjijj