Response 2-AnnieH
Response 2-AnnieH
Group: Annie H, Nichole O, Rob M
Our group decided to focus on the campus bookstore. We believe they overcharge for textbooks and buy back books for too little. In order to draw attention to this, we decided on creating a fake sale on behalf of the bookstore. The bookstore would supposedly be advertising to buy back textbooks for 50%-75% of what students paid. This is similar to the Yes Men pretending to be spokesmen for corporations that chose to “do the right thing”. By pretending to be the bookstore, we will draw attention to the fact that the bookstore rips people off.
We will do things to advertise that are common practice on campus, such as writing with chalk on the sidewalks, printing out fliers and putting them on the windshields of cars, hanging fliers in the Union and around campus, and creating fake Facebook posts and emails supposedly from the University of Maine Bookstore.
After it is revealed that the sale was fake, we will make a post about the bookstore’s profits. We will research how much the school makes off selling the books versus how much it costs to make the book. In that way we will justify our actions, as we will point out that most of the students are spending a huge percentage of their income on school when the bookstore is getting the books for a very small percentage of what they sell them for.
I think this idea is doable, as it applies to us and directly affects every student. We wouldn’t technically be breaking any rules, we would just cause a small disruption of everyday life on campus and draw attention to an issue that is important to us. It also uses some of the solutions we have talked about, such as many to many, many to one, and one to one. It gets both individuals to interact with each other as well as groups. Talking with others individually, working with groups of people who have access to UMaine social media accounts, and using the different forms of both physical and virtual communication will show a wide variety of New Media strategies.
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Interesting idea.
It would be good to get the inside scoop about ow much of a profit the bookstore actually makes? or does it lose money selling texts?
If you can get some sense of the real “rip off” then proposing an interesting solution could be really cool.
Students who get your story would goto the Bookstore and ask for the 50-75% deal–and you’de get lots of puzzled people–you would need to have Maine Campus reps to know about th story and cover it…and send out press releases…(hacking the umaine website…by finding a person who can edit the bookstore section and is willing to do so…would that cost them their job? or could they do this as an art/class project?