Bookstore Bans Books

In fall quarter of 2000, Evergreen student Sky Cosby began selling a few radical, underground books on campus. Shortly afterwards, he created a student originated study on opening an independent bookstore and drafting a business plan.

A couple years later, Cosby opened the doors to Last Word Books in downtown Olympia. Every quarter since its opening on May Day of 2002, Last Word Books has sold used books on topics ranging from anarchy and counterculture to administrative law and philosophy. Chances are, if you aren’t a freshman and you’ve been on Red Square more than once, you have seen him or the Last Word stand.
However, when he arrived on campus this fall, ready to set up his table as he had done for almost ten years, Cosby was informed by Conference Services that he was no longer welcome on campus as a vendor and would not be sold a permit. When he asked why, Conference Services said their hands were tied; a moratorium had been instituted over the summer banning book sales. Why did this happen, who was at the bottom of it, and is this the kind of treatment Evergreen alumni can expect from the campus?

Instigating the ban

When someone asks who is responsible for this, it is remarkable how often one finds more pointed fingers than answers. Equally remarkable is how often those fingers form a circle, indicting everybody and nobody all at once. This case is no different.
When interviewed, Ken Danis, the new bookstore manager hired in June of last year, stated that John Hurley, Vice President for Finance and Administration, was the person who put the policy in place.

John Hurley stated that, while it was he who approved the moratorium, it was the Space Management Committee that made the recommendation. Finally, Collin Orr, Director of Business Services and member of the Space Management Committee, closed the loop by claiming that Danis “was first to bring up the idea.”

When Danis was asked if he himself was the person who instigated the idea of the ban, he responded, “Probably.”

The answer to the question of who is responsible is: D. All of the above. The moratorium on outside vendors commenced through a memo describing a recommendation, prompted by Ken Danis, written by Collin Orr and the Space Management Committee, approved by John Hurley, and enforced by Conference Services.

The moratorium reads as follows: “Until the Space Scheduling and Usage Policy is approved, no vendors will be allowed on campus that compete with any of the college’s auxiliary services, for example, Bookstore, Copy Center.”

While this language makes it seem like a temporary inconvenience, the current draft of the Space Scheduling and Usage Policy reads, “Commercial vendors cannot sell products or services sold by campus organizations including, but not limited to, food, books, and some clothing items.”

When the smoke cleared after the moratorium was put into effect, only one outside business had lost their right to set up shop on Evergreen: Last Word Books.

Last Word and the Library

In 2004, the Friends of the Evergreen Library began looking for someone to take over the selling of unwanted books to benefit the Library. Cosby and Last Word were the only one who would take the job. Last Word would take the books—sometimes 50 boxes at a time—sort, categorize, list, and sell them either in the store or online. “I doubled their profit almost instantly,” said Cosby.

When Liza Rognas, Evergreen faculty reference librarian and the liaison between Last Word Books and the reference librarian group, heard about the ban, she told the CxPJ, “I don’t like it. I think that the relationship between Last Word Books and the Library serves the college very well. Former Evergreen students are generating a few thousand dollars a year that goes straight to collection development at the Library. It has been a real holistic, long-term arrangement.”

The relationship between Cosby and the Library doesn’t exist solely for business. “Sky brings back books taken from the Library all the time that students tried to sell at Last Word Books.”

Why only Last Word Books?

Every response from the administration for why they kept returning to the rationale of no competition on campus, but their idea of what constitutes competition was vague at best. For instance, one commercial vendor has—since the moratorium was implemented—been coming to campus to sell Obama shirts and mugs, even though shirts and mugs are sold at the Bookstore.

According to Orr, this is acceptable because the Bookstore’s own shirts and mugs are “logoed” with the Evergreen name. Since this private vendor doesn’t sell shirts and mugs with evergreen emblazoned on them, they are not considered competition. This should be compared to the rationale behind why Last Word is considered competition.

When on campus, Cosby and Last Word sold between 95% and 100% used books and refused to carry any textbooks or assigned reading for Evergreen classes. “When students wanted to buy their class books, I directed them to the Bookstore,” said Cosby. “I would love to see the Bookstore stay open.” While this would appear to be a clear example of not only non-competition but willful cooperation and even advocacy, the individuals involved in crafting the new policy and who were interviewed here felt otherwise.

“They sell the same types of books we sell here,” said Danis. “I’ve walked down there and looked at his stand and seen the same types of books there.” No one who didn’t stand to benefit from the expulsion of Last Word Books shared Danis’ observation. “Oh, sure there was a difference,” said Liza Rognas. “Yeah, I saw a big difference. They had a much broader selection, used books, philosophy, and a lot of books for the Left.”

Examples, please?

“They sell mushroom books, and we sell mushroom books,” said all three administrators I interviewed, as if this example was the one they settled on as a group to be the case-winning argument. This, despite that the variety of literature encompassed by the category “Mushroom Books” is vastly different between the two operations. The Bookstore has mushroom books on foraging and identifying wild edible mushrooms in the Pacific Northwest, while Last Word carries how-to guides on growing psilocybin and other hallucinogenic mushrooms. It’s doubtful whether someone who wants to learn how to grow mushrooms because they want a cheap, organic and fun way to watch the moon melt will think, “You know what? Forget this. I just want to find a portobello in the woods.”

Another example is environmentalist literature. While the Bookstore may carry a book discussing the pros and cons of cap-and-trade policy or other market solutions to climate change, Last Word carries books like Ecodefense, an explanatory guide on how to safely carry out various monkeywrenching missions, such as disabling or destroying large destructive machinery and spiking trees—in other words, as Danis nonchalantly replied, “terrorism books.”

Terrorism books?

That’s right, terrorism books. Danis went on to say, “I don’t know if [Last Word] is carrying The Anarchist Cookbook, which is a book we don’t carry.” We asked Collin Orr where our copy of The Anarchist Cookbook was. “Why wouldn’t we sell The Anarchist Cookbook?” Orr said. “If a professor says it’s a class book, we would sell it.”

Liza Rognas laughed at Danis’ comment, saying, “Terrorism books? Of course Sky sells terrorism books. Guess what? We’ve got terrorism books on our stacks.” Sure enough, The Anarchist Cookbook, filed under the subjects anarchism, drug abuse, explosives, firearms, and cookery (hashish),” is call number HX844.P68 at the Evergreen Library. There’s also a copy in the reference stacks, in case the other copy is checked out and you need a recipe for napalm and a good Molotov cocktail in a hurry.

Free speech

The fact that Last Word Books was the only vendor removed from campus, the nature of the administration’s response to inquiries about it, and the policies of what will and will not be available to students on Evergreen begin to bring this to light as an issue of free speech. “This clearly isn’t a policy of just protecting the Bookstore,” states one Evergreen student. “This is obviously directed at silencing Last Word Books.”

The history of Evergreen over the past decade has been aimed at silencing and marginalizing any form of dissent and student power on campus. From the Evergreen Police acquiring handguns in fall 1999 despite massive student opposition, to responses to the 2008 Valentine’s and May Day riots, to the formation of the new Student Code of Conduct DTF and the attempted prosecution of those involved in the Israeli checkpoint street theater protest on Red Square last year, the ban of Last Word Books is one of the latest efforts in a continuing trend.

Contrasting Last Word Books’ consensus-run process, we asked Danis if student workers at the Bookstore had a vote in how the Bookstore is run. Danis summed up the way the process works at Evergreen succinctly: “This is not a democracy.”

Student response

When asked if he would consider reversing the vendor ban if students demanded that Last Word return to campus, Danis responded, “No one’s come and talked to me.” As of this publication, two stories have been published through the Cooper Point Journal—both in favor of Last Word returning to campus—and Cosby was interviewed by John Ford on kaos about the ban.

Students interviewed were upset upon hearing about the ban and were overwhelmingly in favor of Cosby and Last Word returning to campus. “It was a good connection with the campus and brought awareness of the local Olympia community and locally-owned businesses,” said one student who volunteered at a bookshop in Austin, Texas over the summer. “I lived on campus, and it was difficult at times to leave. I bought books like Manifestos on the Future of Food and Seed and How Nonviolence Protects the State from Last Word. At the same time, I bought things from the Bookstore, too. Book fans are going to be book fans regardless.”

There are other ways students are registering their displeasure with the moratorium. The program “Political Economy and Social Movements” has considered a boycott of the Bookstore, with the idea of purchasing all their books through Last Word as a show of solidarity. The measure, brought up and voted on by students and backed by faculty, ended up purchasing 20 books from Last Word directly and around 10 from the book store. Showing that giant corporations pose more of a threat than any local business, the rest of the students opted to purchase their books online or from bigger chain stores. “I would love to buy my books from Last Word,” one student told me. “But with tuition and other costs of living going up, I need to find the cheapest books I can.”

The effect this has on campus

In a place where there’s so much resistance from the administration to kick off Bank of America or divest from companies that profit from the criminal occupations of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Palestine, banning a local business operated by former and current Evergreen students completely contradicts the founding principles of this college. “It’s a surface-level sham,” Cosby stated flatly. “I’ve always sought to bridge the gap between the Olympia community and the Evergreen Campus.” Rognas agreed. “I think the hardest part about this is the effect this has on the relationship that the college has had with the outer community. To have that shut down willfully is sad.” What was once a thriving connection with downtown Olympia is now all but non-existent. But Cosby has new plans. “I’ve been thinking about opening up a reading room on Red Square or in the Library building. Not selling books—just a place where students can hang out and read. I just want to be there one to two days a quarter to provide the service that I do.”

In the end, everyone I interviewed discussed what students wanted. Some of those discussions were obviously covers; some of them were deep and heartfelt. “It seems like they’ve [the Bookstore] always missed the opportunity to draw people in,” said a staff member in Student Activities. “They’re continuing to alienate their clientele: the students.”

Rognas commented, “Last Word understands Evergreen students because they were Evergreen students.” Cosby, sitting outside Caffé Vita with a tattered copy of a Vonnegut novel and cigarette, summed it up best: “I’ve got my finger on the pulse of Evergreen, and I know what they want…They want to read radical books.”