Bookstore goes online, cable goes offline

The Eagle Pride Bookstore’s former location in the Student Center is now Game Day Eagle Campus Store, strictly selling CSC apparel.

The bookstore went completely online, run by Missouri Bookstore Direct. Students may have their textbooks shipped to campus and pick them up in the mailroom.

“The revenue drop we’ve seen in the last seven years is huge, about a 75 percent drop,” Vice President of Administration and Finance Dale Grant said.

Grant said students are going elsewhere online to find a better price.

He said another factor in the switch to online was “the number of complaints we got,” about unanswered phone calls, or textbooks not arriving on time.

“The old bookstore model simply isn’t working like it’s suppose to,” Josh Redden, Game Day manager, said.

Redden officially took over July 1. He mentioned that Game Day may start selling blue books or other supplies if there is a need, but for now the focus is clothing.

Another change on campus is students living in the residence halls will no longer be offered cable in their rooms. Cable will only be provided in the halls’ common areas.

Students may still contract Great Plains Communications themselves, and pay to have cable in their room, “just as a student living off campus would,” Grant said.

He said a survey conducted of students living in the residence halls last spring proved that students cared most about improving Wi-Fi and did not use cable as much.

Grant said the survey showed “they streamed a lot of things, and that’s why we wanted to invest in the wireless Internet.”

About $500,000 was spent on upgrading the Wi-Fi by installing many more wireless access points to “up the capacity,” according to Grant.

The money came from the surplus fund, which is only used for big projects in the residence halls, Grant said, because the excess money from students’ housing and meal plan costs is what makes up the surplus fund.

Other projects CSC worked on this summer were fixing the Kent Hall sprinklers, completing construction on the Crites Hall steps, and starting the design work for an upgrade to the football stadium.

Grant said replacement for the concrete stands and the press box, as well as resurfacing the field, is in the works. Construction on the stadium is set for November 2017.