The dawn of a new school year is upon us. Unfortunately, summers (particularly the awful ones) have a way of inflicting amnesia onto returning college students.
Autumn amnesia can serve as a coping mechanism, so that year after year we still manage to forget about the pressures, the deadlines and the pedantic philosophy professors of semesters past.
The new year allows us to become distracted by the first-week excitement of reuniting with old friends rather than to brood over the colossal losses of money, not to mention dignity, from the university establishments that habitually exploit our ill-timed condition. The most disturbing example of this phenomenon is seen when students calmly go to purchase their textbooks at the Loyola bookstore.
I fail to understand why students will allow the bookstore to rip them off every semester, when there are so many viable options available other than overpaying at such an exasperating, though slightly more convenient, location.
The only explanation is the yearly epidemic of autumn amnesia. What else could it be? But most debasing of all is the end-of-semester ritual in which students present their barely scathed books upon the altar of the bookstore.
What do they get in exchange?
At best, they receive a meager percentage of what they first paid for these bound copies of tedium.
But nevertheless, Loyola students continue to allow the bookstore to engorge itself on student proceeds, offering parents’ hard-earned cash as hosts.
Curiously, they do it obligingly, with smiles on their faces.
Enough already. Students of Loyola, I beckon you to resist!
If you find yourself tempted when looking at the neatly piled stacks of books, handily located in one space, say aloud, “I would rather jump in a cesspool.”
If this proves to be futile, say, “I would rather extract my own teeth with a filthy pair of pliers found in said cesspool.”
Keep saying this audibly until you are absolutely certain that you mean it. If it helps, think of that time you were offered five bucks for a forty-five dollar book, which was then sold again for something considerably more than five bucks. This should do the trick.
Once you have yourself adequately worked up, march yourself to the first computer available, look up the necessary titles on the internet, and save some money (later, sell them the same way).
Or buy them from your friends. Barter. Even make your purchases and sales through the SGA.
Just please, replace your resignation with indignation!
Nicole Rabalais is a history junior.
