The marketplace forces students to leave their backpacks at the door so they don’t steal. Meanwhile, they’re stealing your money by overpricing their merchandise.
In addition to abolishing this stupid rule, it’s time this university lowers their prices on food and beverages and provides a convenient, healthy and cheaper option for students that struggle to pay the bills.
“I just think it’s more convenient for the store rather than the students,” HSU psychology major Natalia Ruiz said. “They don’t want us stealing but they have our backpacks right next to the door. They don’t care. They just care what’s easy to them.”
Racing right past the notion that they’re calling out students to be thieves with the backpack tactic, one has to wonder why the pricing is so high in the first place?
Taking a look at the prices of some fairly common student favorites, there definitely seems to be a correlation with price gouging products that are useful to students.
The very popular Guayakí Yerba Mate sells at the Marketplace for about $3.70 per bottle or can if you’re paying with your hard-earned cash. If you load money onto your C-point account you get a whopping five percent off that price which comes to a huge discount of $0.19 coming to just about $3.51 each. Wow. What a deal. (sarcasm)
“There’s not many places for students to buy food on campus,” Ruiz said. “This is the only thing we got and they’re not really giving us an option to go somewhere cheaper.”
That same bottle of Yerba Mate sells at Target for just $3. That’s 19 percent off of the Marketplace’s regular price, or 14 percent more of a discount than your C-card. Yerba Mate goes for only $2.50 at Texaco. That is a huge discount of about 32 percent from the Market’s regular price.
The C-point price for Yerba Mate is obviously five percent better in price than the regular pricing. It’s not enough and the prices need to come down. Some naysayers may try to push meal plans into the discussion but not everyone can afford a meal plan.
If you’re really down on your luck and a Kraft Easy Mac is the only warm meal you can afford, you better have at least $2.19 for it. The same Easy Mac sells in bulk at Costco for $0.82 per bowl. Walmart has them for around a buck each and surprisingly, target is the cheapest, at just $0.53 per bowl.
If cereal is something you want, you better be prepared to fork up $7.09. Even with the highly touted J-card, you’re still spending $5.17 plus tax on a box of Cheerios. The same box goes for about $3 everywhere else.
The backpack plan was instituted poorly by administration further showcasing their ineptitude in matters of decision making for student’s lives.
According to an article in Fortune magazine, employees in the U.S are responsible for 43 percent of lost revenue. The $18 billion total loss is $2 billion more than what is shoplifted by the customers.
So, instead of hiring a loss prevention employee, the Market now employs a person to stand at each doorway to tell students to leave their backpacks behind. They also managed to pay construction workers to build the useless backpack racks. Where else can the administration waste our money?
