Jacob Franklin
Opinions Editor
This past summer, Sewanee students were opted into the First Day Complete Program (FDCP), a program where college campuses partner with Barnes & Noble to ensure that students can conveniently pick up all of their textbooks for the semester from their local bookstore for a charge of $250. According to the Director of Sewanee’s Business Directory, Jimmy Davis, as of September 5, 1,212 out Sewanee’s 1,662 students stayed in the program. With 73% of the Sewanee student body participating in this program, one must consider whether or not this program benefits the overall student body’s accessibility to source materials, or if the $250 charge is simply not worth it.
In the fall of 2022, the Order of the Gown administered a survey polling students on the amount of money they spent on their books that semester. Freshman, Sophomores, Juniors, and Seniors all reported spending more than $250 for their course materials. To investigate this issue further, The Sewanee Purple sat down with Order of the Gown President Alexis Minait (C’25) to discuss the topic of the FDCP, due to her presidential campaign’s dedication to academic accessibility.
“Last year […] my job was to sit on an amazing task force as the OG Educational Resources Chair […] where we would sit down once a month and talk about how we can lower the cost of books for students,” Minait said. “In order for students to be totally enriched by the Sewanee experience, we do not want them to be stressed about the costs of textbooks.”
However, there are obviously certain students who would benefit more from opting out of the program, as 27% of Sewanee students, including Minait herself, elected not to participate in the FDCP.
“The opt-out is a very important piece of the program,” Minait said. “Me, as a politics student, may pay $60 a semester [for course materials], while a STEM student might pay $400 for one textbook. As a liberal arts institution, we have to be ready for all types of students.”
As Minait stated, because of the diverse areas of study Sewanee offers, it is important that every type of learner can grow in their education, and an important part of that growth is ensuring that students have a vast well of resources. The resources on-campus give students more options than just opting into or out of the FDCP. Sewanee has adopted a system of Open Educational Resources, otherwise known as OER, where professors can curate written materials from a cloud of uploaded materials and, essentially, create their own textbooks with no additional cost to students. The library’s Circulation Desk also has all of every course’s required materials available for short rental periods.
While this abundance of resources might make some students skeptical of the necessity of the FDCP, these resources actually allow for students to better customize their learning. If it is worth it for a student to have their books annotated, they can purchase their own books via a third party or through the FDCP. If a student cares more about cutting the cost of their course materials, they can use the Circulation Desk. There are no problems with an additional resource for students to make their learning their own, and the FDCP is a resource that students can opt into or out of depending on their priorities as learners.
The FDCP is largely a benefit for Sewanee students. Students can not just more easily afford their textbooks but also receive their textbooks with all of their materials delivered to the Sewanee Bookstore in a plastic bag waiting for you to pick it up. However, there are obvious drawbacks from the benefits of the FDCP, including the fact that, if one’s books are not as expensive as $250 and the convenience of the FDCP’s delivery process, then the $250 charge of the FDCP might not be worth it. Students still have until September 11 to opt out of the FDCP.