Students wait to buy textbooks

According to Jennifer Maynard, students shopping in the University Book Center are tense… According to Jennifer Maynard, students shopping in the University Book Center are tense today.

It’s the second day of classes, lines in the University Book Center are long, textbooks are expensive and sometimes, the books aren’t even there.

Maynard, who normally orders books for the Pitt-owned store, worked at the Information Desk yesterday, assisting students as they navigated through cash register lines stretching halfway through the store.

“I’ve just been telling people that their textbooks are downstairs for the last few days,” Maynard said.

Maynard said the first day of classes tends to be the Center’s busiest day, but that the lines will be long throughout this week.

Sophomore Aaron Bruckart stood in one of those lines, intermittently pushing a shopping basket filled with books — 14 in all — toward the register. Twenty minutes into his wait to check out, he estimated his total purchase would be about $300.

“It’s horrible. [The books] are hard to find and it’s horrible because you see the price tag and all your summer money is down the drain,” Bruckart said.

“Well said,” Tracy Schmitt remarked. Standing slightly ahead of Bruckart in line, Schmitt easily carried her lone textbook in her right hand. But the financial burden was heavy: The Mathematical Statistics text lists for $105.

Waiting in line and ready to spend a substantial amount of money on a few hundred pages of text, Schmitt only had one concern: She might not even like the class.