To whom it may concern:
I just received an email about renewing my locker and was astonished to see that the cost of a locker has DOUBLED from $5 to $10 per quarter. This is a significant increase and I don´t understand exactly why.
Could someone explain why the cost of a storage space that many universities provide for free would go from $20 to $40 a year without notice? Has the cost of maintaining the lockers actually doubled over the last year?!
It should come as no surprise that as a graduate student, accustomed to a graduate student budget, I am upset about this. The lockers don´t have any maintenance cost I can figure out. This just seems like a sneaky and underhanded way for the library to take advantage of students and earn a quick buck. I not "buying" it.
The Suggestions Office received a few complaints yesterday, presumably as the result of locker renewal notices going out this week. Our friends in Access Services confirmed the reports: locker fees in Regenstein are now $10/quarter.
While it's true that some other libraries provide locker/carrel space for free, they do so on much more restrictive terms - for example, very few undergraduates are fortunate enough to have such space. Among universities that do rent lockers to both graduate and undergraduate students, our new fees (even with the increase) are roughly comparable: for example, Cornell's Kroch and Uris Libraries charge $15/semester, and NYU's Bobst Library charges $50/year.
We admit the lockers are low-maintenance, but this is a relative term: with over 1800 lockers in the building, there is a non-trivial burden to managing the lockers, clearing out those that are expired, and repairing broken locks and hinges. Past experience also impels us to do regular sweeps through all the lockers, checking for uncharged books. In previous years, we had to hire student employees entirely for "locker duty."
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