Printing services and vending have been closed and outsourced to other companies.
It was brought to the attention of the Independent in a letter to the editor printed on Aug. 12, that said printing services closed on July 31. Unrelated to the letter, vending closed shortly after. This resulted in the termination of five university employees.
“In most of these business type areas we are constantly looking at running these as a business operation,” said Mark Wilcockson, Vice President for Finance and Administration. “And both of these units were far under expenditures to operate those areas,” said Wilcockson.
Printing Services and Vending were replaced by Quartet and Canteen respectively. Quartet can be found in Becks Bookstore. Wilcockson said, “There are so many people printing documents on network printers and personal printers that the volume is down. So that was the driving force in closing the print shop. Vending was the same thing. It wasn’t in as bad as shape as printing but it was still the revenues we were making off vending did not support the department. We had two full time people who stocked vending machines on campus and our costs were exceeding our revenues.”
Wilcockson said, “With the print shop Becks came forward and filled that void on campus and from all indications they are doing a good job and have filled that void on campus.”
“Canteen, which is a leader in the area came back with a very good proposal we have expanded products in vending, the first reports we got back from canteen, I’m very happy with the level of business. I think our business has actually picked up. They offer a lot of products that we have never had before, cold sandwiches and those kinds of things that seem to be a big hit particularly with evening students. So it seems to be a success in both areas.” Wilcockson said.
The university did not look to this as necessary budget cuts but a re-evaluation of university departments. The university is not saving money on closing these departments as Wilcockson said, “Printing and vending were a part of the university Auxiliary System. The fact that they were losing money was the fact that they were taking money away from the university as a whole. So it’s not that the university is saving money we are just decreasing the cost in our Auxiliary System.”