By Jolie Shultz
Online Editor
Winter storms and chilling temperatures affected many different aspects of Hutchinson Community College’s campus life already this semester. Not only were classes canceled on three different days, but there was also a massive campus-wide technology shutdown.
Although many different locations on campus were heavily affected, the campus bookstore was forced to temporarily close while the IT team worked to bring the system back up.
Nina Becaro, a Brazil sophomore, works in the campus bookstore at Parker Student Union.
“I wasn’t there when the system went down, because I wasn’t working that Friday,” she said, referring to the day the store closed. “Luckily, I was still able to get my hours in and I already had all my books, so it didn’t affect me, neither in a positive or negative way. I think that my manager, however, was affected pretty heavily by it because people would go to her to complain about the situation.”
Although Becaro wasn’t directly affected, some students had problems with the store being closed. Because the store was closed, students couldn’t purchase textbooks, and those with a book scholarship often didn’t want to go to a third party to pay out of pocket for textbooks.
Tenley Kaufmann, a high school senior from Nickerson taking some classes at HutchCC, was one of these students affected.
“I’ve been back in school since Jan. 2, so I haven’t necessarily had a lot of free time to get my textbooks for my online classes that I’m taking through the college. So it was kinda frustrating to get on campus, on one of the only days I had time to get my books, to find out that the bookstore was closed and I wasn’t able to get the books I needed for my classes,” Kaufmann said.
“I understand why the bookstore had to close, but it was frustrating nonetheless, especially since I’m not on campus very often,” she said. “But luckily, my instructors seemed to be understanding about the situation and once the bookstore opened back up again, I was able to get the books I needed.”
When the bookstore finally did reopen, Becaro had some mixed emotions about how the process would go.
“I love working there and being able to help people. I was definitely a bit nervous though, because we had so many orders that we had to process all over again, go over scholarships, and basically redo everything that was deleted from when the systems came down,” Becaro said.
“Our manager, guided us pretty well and with a lot of patience which made the work 10 times easier and smoother”
The campus bookstore, as well as everything else that the tech outages shutdown, are back open for business.
