An Anthill Gets a Little Bigger
Lauren Shepherd | Sep 25, 2012 | Comments 9
David Conley | New University
Freshmen, don’t mistake the Hill’s entrance for your dorm room. The fully decked out dorm room displays may become the new hub for undergrads, giving them a chance to live in dorm-dreamland. “The Hill just has a different vibe to it, its pretty cool,” third year student Alex Guardado said.
The UCI Bookstore used to be an automatic stop for course books, school supplies and UCI threads, but now, the Hill offers dorm room necessities and other not-so-necessary items.
“We get questions like ‘What is the Hill?’ and ‘Why the Hill?,’” the Hill staff member Luis Renteria said. The Hill is no longer a home to books of all ages, but rather a retail hub for the modern anteater. “The changes are good, more space has been provided for more apparel. We are also trying to bring in more skateboards, and more things from UC Items as well,” Renteria said.
“Students love how there are clothes everywhere. Students love how it’s more organized and there is more space,” the Hill staff member Rachelle Aguilera said.
“From my personal experience, I see more apparel being bought, which I think is due to the new presentation,” Renteria said.
The early boost in clothing sales on the eve of rush week proves promising for the Hill’s staff and the rest of the student body. “When students buy their books or other products from The Hill, the money stays on campus and goes back to support students and student activities as well as assessments back to the campus for its general support,” Stacey Murren, director of Student Center and Scheduling & Conference Services, and interim director of the UCI Bookstore said.
According to Vice Chancellor Dr. Thomas Parham, the $65,000 for aesthetic improvements and rebranding consultation was not taken from student funds, but rather from store operation reserves.
“We have a campus of over twenty thousand rather brilliant young people and I think if the powers that be were insisting on marketing to that population, a rather good contest could have been mounted to re-name the bookstore,” Michelle Latiolais, co-director of Programs in Writing, said.
Some faculty believe that the money spent to hire a consulting firm to rename, let alone reorganize the bookstore, should have been spent on student academics. “That money could have gone to support students. In fact, it could have paid fees for four students for a year,” Latiolais said.
According to Murren, the Hill will participate in National Student Day on Thursday, October 4, in which an essay contest about social involvement will give writers the opportunity to win free course materials for a whole quarter.
“We are working to expand the author series program to bring in even more high profile external authors than have participated in our series previously,” Murren said.
Clothing sales are up, but will the dorm room displays gather dust in the Hill, rather than be snatched up by apartment dwellers?
“I wouldn’t buy any dorm stuff here anyway, but maybe that works for freshmen; but for me that doesn’t change anything at all,” third year graduate student Christian Herrera said.
Students are no longer asking about book recommendations, but rather, where the heck everything is.
“I liked the way it was before because books were right in the front. I went to the general book section today and it is all the way in the back in the corner,” Herrera said.
“It is really no longer a bookstore. To have allowed the bookstore to be destroyed is to have foreclosed on one significant facet of the educational mission at UC Irvine,” Latiolais said.
Don’t forget to say goodbye to the dwindling supply of general books, banished to the clearance corner, on your way to course books below. Course book sales, on the other hand, have the best chance of surviving with an impressive “match your price” guarantee.
“It’s a really good deal that they would match any price that you would give them,” Herrera said.
“If you find a book is cheaper on Amazon, you bring the proof to us and we will match that price for you,” Renteria said.
The new course book policy also offers the ability to rent selected books for a quarter or more. Even freshmen looking for the dreaded I-Clickers will be able to rent the once costly quiz clickers.
Students of all years and majors will be pleased to find the course-bookstore working to their benefit.
For the Hill staff members, the change is good, as most of them have more opinions about merchandise than recommendations on general books.
Filed Under: Features
Well, fastmiami called it. Less than a month from the October 3rd post, Dan Dooros’nephew James Trujillo was promoted to night-time manager …wow, that WAS fast. Rumor has it , that since Murren took over, the bookstore has lost tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars compared to when the old staff was running it. Guess those pink chandeliers, popcorn and that trip to Salt Lake City didn’t work. I also heard that recently hired full-time staff are quitting within weeks of being hired (with the exception of Trujillo who will probably be promoted to store director next). Wish I was related to Dooros.
Anyone from Marriott, Hilton or the Ritz Carlton could book meeting rooms, schedule and advertise events, run operations, payroll and hiring etc. for cheaper salaries than the current student center senior staff (who received several thousand dollar raises recently despite tuition increases) and without all the travel expenses. Because when you think UC budget crisis you say “Wow! I hope we can retain our highly paid staffers and administration instead of our professors!” If they can “Barnes and Noble” the bookstore in the future, privatize Parking Services (as CSU is proposing) why not “Hiltonize” the Student Center and its services as well as administration? Just asking.
Clothing sales are up? Who told you that? Murren and her staff are notorious for being creative with the truth so as to put her in the best possible light, so if I were the New U I’d ask to see the sales figures. Murren “transformed” a gentle, respected bookstore where it was “family” into a place of intimidation and spies. Except, of course, for the nephew of her immediate superior AVC Dan Dooros, who conveniently was hired as a contracted employee less than 2 months ago. Let’s see how fast HR and Murren fast-track this newphew to running the store. If there are any dictionaries left at “the Hill”, someone at HR should look up “nepotism” and “conflict of interest.”
Parham and Murren are spinning the facts and grossly understating the true amount of the their expenditures. Why doesn’t UCI do an internal audit or maybe someone could do an external audit of exactly how much money is being spent on consultants, proposed water features and new flooring for the bookstore and student center (the flooring is supposed to cost over $50,000 alone)? I agree with professor Latiolais that a student contest would have been a better and much less expensive idea. Apparently, Murren loves spending money or the student center/bookstore reserves. Does this money just magically appear? No, it comes from the profits of the bookstore and the student center (from renting out meeting rooms or catering events). So instead of rolling back these profits or reserves back to the university or students in the form of scholarships or paying down the student center’s remaining debt, Murren buys props,brothel-looking pink chandeliers, popcorn and travels extensively with her entourage. It may be too late to save the bookstore, but it’s not too late to stop Parham and Murren and their extravagant spending.
Doesn’t it seem suspicious that over half of the fulltime bookstore staff with dozens of years of experience and who truly loved the bookstore resigned, retired or transferred to other departments less than one year after Murren took over in October 2011? Why isn’t New U doing a story on that? She gutted the bookstore of its heart and soul because she has none. God forbid UCI ever transfers Murren to the Biology, Computer Science or any other department at the university because her and her student center syncophant staffers and their methods of bullying, ignoring and excluding the current workers will decimate those departments too. Obviously, bullies DO win at UCI. As Murren was a recepient of UCI’s “Living Our Values” award in 2009, does Drake and the university really want to embrace her values?
Okay, Rob. I read the OC Weekly article as well as the earlier New U “Center of their Discontent” article and I have one question: How is Murren getting away with all this? Who does she know or what does she know that let’s her get away with all that unnecessary travel and making sure her partner (?)Puig got a job in a department where she was director so recently. Who signs off on her travel budget? I mean come on NINE people to Salt Lake City? So they could better learn how to fold sweatshirts or sell sodas? Why is part of my tuition going to pay Murren and the highly paid student center/bookstore staffers when anyone from Walmart or Target could do as good a job for much cheaper? They don’t recommend books at Walmart so since she’s turned it into a Walmart,then pay Walmart wages. My friend at UC Berkeley said their bookstore went lease and the university is saving a lot of money because they don’t have the pensions or overhead to pay the staff. Why can’t UCI do this too?
It looks like a BED, BATH AND BEYOND. If you want to get the real truth about the bookstore and its recent “transformation” under Murren read the July 2012 OCWeekly/UCI bookstore article and its comments.
I think it looks like a BED, BATH AND BEYOND instead of a college store I couldn’t find a lot of stuff but the popcorn was okay if that what’s you want from a bookstore.
The photo you are using for this article is actually a UCI Hospitality and Dining employee promoting meals plans, not a bookstore employee. Just thought you should know.