Community May Not Extend Past Words

By Mark Golden, UWFA Member-at-Large

The University of Winnipeg’s commitment to the local community does not always extend beyond words.

A local academic publisher (and sometime U of W instructor in Sociology) has questioned the recent decision to contract out the management of the new campus bookstore to a mammoth multinational. Follett Higher Education runs over 800 college bookstores in the US and thirty-something in Canada.

Wayne Antony of Fernwood Publishing welcomes the bookstore’s future move to a bigger space with more general stock. But he doubts that Follett will be able to meet the specific needs of the U of W — especially given its lack of familiarity with the community. An August Follett press release spoke of competing with the McNally Robinson outlet in Portage Place. This moved to Polo Park eighteen months ago.

“Fernwood … has dealt with the various Follett-run bookstores for years,” Antony wrote in a September letter to U of W President Lloyd Axworthy. “In our experience, Follett-run stores are anything but community-oriented. The stores all look the same, are run the same, and focus on profit rather than being part of the intellectual life of their institutions and of their surrounding communities.” In general, he concludes, they offer no advantage over university-run bookstores.

Full-time members of AESES now employed by Beyond Words, the university’s present bookstore, have been offered positions at the new store. To date, one has accepted, one is uncertain, one has taken a job elsewhere, and one has retired. Follett does not welcome unions in its stores.