NEWS
ASM hopes to bag new grocery store
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by Hans Aschim
Thursday, September 20, 2007
The Associated Students of Madison set their goals for the year Wednesday, including an on-campus grocery store and a new high school shadow program.
"We realize that students need cheap and accessible groceries," said Christie Penn, ASM campus relations chair. "So right now we are putting pressure on planners to include a grocery store in the new Union South."
Union South, which will be remodeled in 2008, is the ideal location of the store, ASM Chair Gestina Sewell said, adding the lack of an affordable on-campus grocery is a major concern of students and parents.
"It's part of students' rights to be able to have healthy food at an affordable price," Sewell said. "Students and parents have been talking about how far grocery stores are away."
Sewell added in addition to finding a definite location for the grocery store, ASM is also concerned with the startup costs of opening a new store and making sure prices are affordable.
"We're looking to see who we can work with on this campus, who's already working on it and then maybe make it a reality," Sewell said.
One place ASM hopes to get startup funds from is grants, Sewell said.
Another option is to use student-segregated fees with the ultimate goal of becoming self-sustainable, similar to ASM Student Print, another business started by ASM.
Sewell added ASM is seeking the opinions of students in the new grocery store plans, and so far, feedback has been positive.
Regardless of the various hurdles that stand in the way of the new store, Sewell said she has confidence in the idea.
"We’re continually talking to students, and it's something they are really excited about and we're hoping to continue working on," Sewell said. "The variable is how it's going to look, knowing it might start off small and then possibly grow larger."
ASM Student Judiciary chair Sol Grosskopf said he did not think opening an on-campus grocery store would be easy, but supports any idea that could benefit the wellbeing of the student population.
"Anything that can help students is something ASM should look into," Grosskopf said. "But at the same time, you have to make sure everything you try is a reasonable goal that can be met and achieved by students."
But, Grosskopf said, the process of opening a grocery store would certainly be "an uphill battle."
Penn also discussed the expansion of the ASM Neighborhood Watch Program, which will broaden into additional neighborhoods this semester.
ASM diversity committee member Hussein Sharif said the organization is also focusing on a shadow program that brings high school students from Madison, Milwaukee and the surrounding areas to experience a college campus.
The goal, Sharif said, is to bring kids to campus and encourage them to pursue a postsecondary education, as well as discuss financial aid and scholarship situations.
ASM also discussed a proposed textbook exchange program that would allow students to trade in their old book for a more reasonable price then local bookstores.
Jessica Pavlic, head of academic affairs for ASM, said the goal of the textbook exchange program would be to avoid the long lines, low buy-back prices and provide less expensive books for students.
Sewell said she hopes more students become involved in ASM, and invited students to "come get involved and hear the truth about what's happening with segregated fees."
—Carl Jaeger contributed to this report.
Anonymous (September 20, 2007 @ 11:34am):
"It's part of students' rights to be able to have healthy food at an affordable price"
Where would someone get this idea?
Anonymous (September 20, 2007 @ 6:32pm):
What will a tiny grocery store at Union South provide that the Open Pantry doesn't already? Also how many students will logically use it?
More importantly grocery stores make the majority of their money through 'volume'. They buy large quantities of an item at a low rate, add a little bit on top to get the stores profit, then hope to sell all of their product before it goes bad. How will a little grocery store be able to achieve the buying power necessary to be able to sell items at a low price and still be sustainable. Unlike the Student Print, the grocery store will be providing goods and not a service.
So how will they be able to provide low cost groceries? Oh right... Segregated Fees. Basically charge all the students in order to fund a grocery store that only a minority of them will use.
Ryan Hebel (October 3, 2007 @ 12:48am):
I absolutely agree with the above post. While a grocery store would be helpful for students on campus, why not try to encourage an outside business to come in and start one up as opposed to digging deeper into the pockets of students through seg fees. After all, any student workers that ASM employs will have to be paid with their minimum wage of around $9.14/hour, which is ludicrous compared to what a Copps or Sentry would charge. This would make it virtually impossible (when coupled with their dearth of volume mentioned in the previous post) to make either a profit or to even sustain itself while providing anything remotely competitive in price to Open Pantry and Copps. Finally, while it is annoying to have to walk 20-30 minutes to get to the nearest Copps if you're carless, that's the whole reason ASM already provides ALL students with free city bus passes through seg fee funding. Either cut seg fee bus funding or cut the grocery store, that's what I say.
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