Chants of “save our bookstore” rang out inside Reeve Memorial Union, where UW Oshkosh students, staff and faculty protested Monday against the university’s decision to outsource University Books and More employees to the Follett Corporation.

Protestors said they wanted to show their support for University Books and More after UWO Chancellor Andrew Leavitt announced in a blog post March 5 that the Universities of Wisconsin had begun negotiating a contract with Follett to manage the bookstore.

First year student Adrian Wall said they protested because they were concerned about how the outsourcing of bookstore employees will impact UWO students.

“There’s no guarantee that the programs that certain students rely on will continue if we outsource it to somebody else that we don’t know,” Wall said. “If we can’t guarantee that the students are comfortable and safe living there, then what’s the point? We’re just going to lose more students, and then the financial situation won’t improve as quickly, because you won’t have as much money coming in from tuition and housing.”

Third year student Elizabeth Frohn Hengst said that they made signs and stood outside of University Books and More to protest the addition of a corporate entity into UWO.

“I have very extreme concerns with the financial safety, especially [because the Universities of Wisconsin] were looking at outsourcing to Barnes and Noble and Follett, and both those are having financial issues,” Frohn Hengst said. “If you even go and look at Follett’s website, or even search them up, you’ll see that they have layoffs. They’re closing school bookstores. So, it seems very unwise to sell out our bookstore to a company that has been having financial trouble.”

According to Leavitt, UWO made the decision to outsource employees to a third party based on a report the university published Aug. 9, 2024, that found University Books and More had a $1 million deficit due to post-pandemic recovery, inflation and a decrease in enrollment. 

The Bookstore Business Model Task Group’s report said the university had a choice between two options.

The first option would include keeping the bookstore independently owned, making their own “immediate and long-term changes” to save on costs and generate revenue. Some of these changes could include slashes in job opportunities and hours of operations as well as a spike in prices. 

The second option was to outsource to a third-party vendor to run the bookstore, which would help University Books and More reach an estimated positive financial balance by 2026. University officials acknowledged in the report that outsourcing would help the business receive more immediate financial relief, but UWO would most likely see a decrease in service and control of the bookstore in the future.

The group determined that no changes at all to current bookstore operations were not financially viable.

Leavitt said the decision to move forward with the outsourcing option was a matter addressing the financial imbalance of University Books and More.

“I need the more business-oriented units, such as the bookstore, or, say, the childcare center or food services, so and so forth, they need to be able to at least, break even, but at best, to contribute to the overall financial stability of the institution,” Leavitt said. “That certainly has not been the case, and that was certainly indicated in that report that in the last five years we’ve been losing money through a self-operated bookstore. [The report] really sort of indicated that we needed to do something completely different in order to make sure that it was a financially viable unit from the university.”

The university’s report on University Books and More found that the bookstore has lost money every year since 2020, except for 2023, when it saw a profit of over $180,000 in COVID-19 federal relief funds. 

Last year, the bookstore was expected to generate $3,911,076 of revenue, but because it costs the university over $4 million to run, the business was estimated to be $160,000 in the red by the end of 2024.

Leavitt said that once the university made the decision that it would have to outsource bookstore employees in order for the business to make money, the decision on which company would take over University Books and More was turned over to the procurement office of the Universities of Wisconsin.

“It’s actually outside of the university,” Leavitt said. “We have a centralized facility group of people at the system level. They put out the request for proposal (RFP), and it’s my understanding that eight different companies replied or responded to the RFP, of which two were considered to be qualified to do the work that was laid out in the RFP … Follett won the bid, if you will, since they had the criteria which best fit the criteria we laid out in the RFP. So Follet was the name that was forwarded to us, and then I had the decision to make, with an intent to engage with and negotiate a contract with Follet, which I asked to be done.”

The Bookstore Business Model Task Group found that in the past, Follett has had issues making commission payments to UW schools.

“Follett indicated that their delinquency was due to industry-wide issues, including a lack of rebound from COVID, a decline in traditional course materials and the rise in Instant Access programs,” the committee said. “Follett shared with UW System partners that they are working to right-size their business and improve their liquidity, and assured UW of full payment of outstanding commission payments by the end of August. Follett will likely be renegotiating their contracts at UW System schools, with some contracts at risk for termination.”

Leavitt said that he’s not concerned about Follett having issues making commission payments to UWO.

“I have done a little bit of my own research in that regard,” Leavitt said. “What happens is that if the population in the school changes radically, or the school itself doesn’t have a lot of students at it, it’s hard on a scale basis, if you will, in order for outsourced activities to do well.”

Leavitt said UWO is large enough, like eight other schools in the system that hold contracts with Follett, that there should be no issues working with a third party.

“Even if we did, we’re under the guise of a contract, and so that contract gives the legal framework for us to negotiate or renegotiate a deal as needed … we’re confident that they will be met and that we believe that they will bring a very high degree of service and bring a level of financial stability to the bookstore for the university,” Leavitt said.

Frohn Hengst said that protesters are worried Follett will take advantage of its employees because it is a private company.

“With [the bookstore] being under the university, [employees] are generally paid more and we have more of them,” Frohn Hengst said. “What is that going to look like in the future, And how will we continue to provide jobs to not only those students who are working there now, who are on work study and are going to be continuing, but any new students coming looking for work study as well?”

UWO Professor Paul Van Auken, who is the chair of the department of sociology, said that as an executive board member for the united faculty and staff of Oshkosh and a union member, he wanted to protest to show his support for fellow workers.

“We supported custodial and grounds crew people when they were being threatened with outsourcing two years ago, because people deserve to be treated well and be able to keep their jobs unless there’s some really compelling reason for them to lose those jobs,” Van Auken, who is a member of the local American Federation of Teachers chapter, said. “We haven’t heard any compelling reasons for that to date.”

Van Auken said that as a member of a union, he is against outsourcing public goods to private companies.

“This is the latest example of many, many things like this happening across society that take things that are meant to be for everyone and outsource them, which leads to poorer-core service, higher prices and less humane interactions,” Van Auken said.

The Advance-Titan reported in December that bookstore employees were worried about losing their jobs if the university decided to outsource, but Leavitt said that there are options for both student workers and the eight full-time employees to transition to Follett.

“We put in as a requirement that those employees have the ability to interview for jobs right at the beginning of once a contract is adopted by a third party vendor,” Leavitt said. “So it would be our expectation that Follett would interview those employees and then they would make their own decision as to whether or not to bring those employees into Follett.”

A student employee at the bookstore, who wished to remain anonymous, confirmed that Follett had told current staff that they can keep their jobs if they apply for them again when the company takes over. According to the employee, Follett is expected to take over the bookstore April 21, and Leavitt said it would be mid-April before University Books and More is outsourced.

Leavitt said that UWO has a commitment to keeping full-time employees on the university payroll through June 30.

“We want to make sure they’re taken care of to the extent that we can, regardless of what happens with Follett,” Leavitt said. “But again, they have the opportunity to interview for those jobs with Follett. And you know, I think that the bookstore has been run very well. I’ve never had a problem with customer service or performance. I think it’s been excellent. It’s more of what it’s been doing financially.”

Frohn Hengst said that they are concerned that Follett will raise prices on textbooks after they take over.

“Generally speaking, most private companies will end up raising prices to make a profit,” Frohn Hengst said. “But to be honest, I tried to research Follett and it’s very shady. It’s really hard to find out how they do things.”

Leavitt said that he is in talks with Follett to add a textbook rental program to help with textbook costs and he said the private company has agreed to make physical updates to the inside of the bookstore.

“I’d very much like to see [a textbook rental program] here, because that really cuts the costs that students have to pay for books,” Leavitt said. “As a matter of fact, if you look across the system, we have one of the highest budgets for books, if not the highest budget for books in our cost of attendance budget, compared to the other comprehensives, simply because in many instances, they have a textbook rental program where we do not.”

Leavitt also said that the Corner Convenience Store, located next door to the bookstore and currently owned by University Books and More, will not be closing with the decision to outsource.

“As a matter of fact, the corner store is going to become a part of the next RFP process, which will occur next year for food service,” Leavitt said. “It makes a lot more sense for the food service vendor to run the corner store compared to, say, a bookstore.”

Leavitt said he wants to make sure people know that UWO is going to continue to have a physical bookstore for students, staff and faculty to buy all the materials and other supplies they need.

“What I’m really excited about is what Follett will do with the space itself,” Leavitt said. “My understanding is they’re very happy and impressed with the space, the square footage, and when they infuse their own capital into that facility in order to make their own improvements, it’s going to be an exciting space to be in. That’s something we simply couldn’t afford to do as a remodel, but there will be remodel as a result of this next contract.”

Both Van Auken and Frohn Hengst said they were angry with the way Leavitt released the official decision to outsource.

“I didn’t even know that the chancellor had a blog [before this],” Frohn Hengst said. “So I think he did that in a way to keep students in the dark, because he knows he had the situation with the layoffs, with the deficit, and of course, recently, with the possibility of the Rec Plex closing, students got very upset. I think he knows if he brings it up again, students would be upset again.”

Van Auken said the university has not had an open process when it comes to the decision to outsource.

“Initially, the questions and the information that was being put out there was actually squashed,” Van Auken said. “Why? Why shouldn’t the whole campus know what’s going on? So when bookstore employees are telling us they’re doing this, that or the other, we can’t hear from people in charge as to why you’re not addressing these concerns. That’s a big problem.”

Leavitt, who said that he has been limited on what he can announce because contract negotiations are ongoing, said that he’s been talking about the financial issues and the possibility of outsourcing the bookstore for almost two years.

“I have telegraphed this and talked about this in public any number of times,” Leavitt said. “We’ve been very upfront, I believe, with the employees, and notifying them that we were going to go into a bid process after the study was done. I made the conclusion that I really think that we need to look at third party vendors to see what they could do for us. So each step of the way, I believe that we have kept people informed.”

Leavitt said he believes the university will see a better outcome in the bookstore if it is outsourced to Follett.

“They are a national vendor, and so I don’t see any diminishment in the service or the quality of the bookstore experience,” Leavitt said. “At the same time, we’re still going to be able to run the bookstore, which certainly, again, at least breaks even, but in this case, because of the commissions that would come our way, will actually add to the financial stability of the institution.”