After almost a month of waiting, the St. Thomas University agendas arrived on Wednesday. Within an hour, the 500 book shipment was all gone. Another shipment came on Friday, but students quickly snatched those up too. More are coming.
For weeks the help desk had signs reading “NO Agendas YET!”
STUSU help desk coordinator, Erika Hickey, says lately all she had been doing was telling students that the STUgendas still weren’t in. And even with the signs, volunteers say people were confused why they weren’t in, a month into the school year.
Fin Mackay-Boyce, vice-president of administration of the Students’ Union, is responsible for the STUgendas.
Mackay-Boyce said the problem was between STU and the printing company, May Day Fine Print.
“[The agendas] are paid for through our student fees, and we have them because we can provide them at a substantially discounted price compared to buying an agenda from the bookstore or an alternative location,” Mackay-Boyce said.
He acknowledges that it’s not fair to the students that the agendas arrived late.
“It was due to some miscommunications between myself and sponsors.”
Mackay-Boyce said the company also took longer to coil-bind the agendas then they had estimated.
The company is paying students to help bind the agendas together because they are understaffed. Shelby Ward, help desk volunteer, says when she went there to help there were only two other people there.
“They put the order in late…but also May Day Fine Print messed up a page which said 2012 instead of 2013,” Ward said.
When she was binding them she had to replace the sheet, making the process even longer.
Hickey said the STUgendas are appealing because they are free. She said so many people come to ask about them and seem “lost without them.”
Katelyn Debouver is a first-year student. She was frustrated they hadn’t come in yet. “I have come to JDH five or six times…then the one day they were here they sold out in like five minutes and unfortunately I wasn’t the one to get it,” Debouver said.
The STUgendas were late last year too because of printing issues.
