By Chloe Jones
In my time at McPherson College in the past year and a half, the campus store has been an elusive and mysterious place. Many things have changed, and many things are yet to be changed. During orientation, all of the freshman (including myself) were taken downstairs in the Student Union to see the Pound, the campus store and our mailboxes. At the time, the store was open and, of course, seemed full and busy with our parents lingering nearby in the first few days of the school year.
After a while though, the hype surrounding the campus store died down. I soon realized that when it came time for me to pick up my books, I couldn’t seem to get to the campus store when they were open. I began to form the opinion that I still hold today: the campus store just isn’t open at convenient times for students.
Freshman year was a very busy time for me, especially around lunch. With convocation just about every week, and club meetings or other pop-ups on my schedule, getting lunch turned into a grab-and-go affair. This left little or no time for me to run downstairs to see if my package had been delivered. Sometimes, I would use what little time I had to stop in, and to my surprise, it was closed despite the sign which told me that it should, in fact, be open. This year I have not run into this problem, however, I do think that there is still room to grow for the campus store.
If I could make changes, the first thing I would do is add weekend hours. While this may not seem important, there are other students, like me, who are so crazy busy during the week that they forget or don’t have the time to go to the campus store. If it were open for just two hours each day on the weekends, I believe it would help a lot of busy students and give student workers more time to work.
Another change that would be beneficial is a little more promotion and more relevant merchandise. If students saw posters around campus about the campus store, more people would stop in to have a look around. In addition, if the store were to start selling personal care items and items popular among students, it would attract more business. Overall, I am thankful to have a campus store. Small changes could bring it from the simple standard of what students need, to what students want. Students will actively come in more, in addition to just picking up their packages.
