Today is the start of the spring quarter at the University of Denver. I took a walk around the campus yesterday, and as the photograph above shows, there were not many students out and about. That photo was taken from the bridge over Evans Avenue here in Denver, which connects the Community Commons Building to Driscoll South, where the University of Denver Bookstore is located. I was the Finance Manager of the DU Bookstore before it was outsourced to Follett Higher Education Group back in 2012. For many years, I scheduled the cashiers and assisted on the sales floor during what we called "rush," the period when the store would be jammed with students buying books and supplies. However, the spring quarter was always the least stressful. A lot of students would extend their spring break and spend an extra few days in Europe, the Caribbean, Mexico, or some other exotic locale (a lot of rich kids go to DU), and business was spread out across several weeks, rather than everyone showing up on the same day, as it was during the start of the fall and winter quarters. Which no doubt explains why the campus was so quiet yesterday. Of course, back then, we were still open the Sunday before classes began to allow students who did arrive back for the start of classes to buy their books and supplies early, which I noticed Follett does not do, at least not yesterday. Of course, for the year I worked at the bookstore when Follett was contractually obligated to employ the staff laid off by DU, I noticed that serving the students was a very low priority. And probably still is. I'm just sayin'.
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