Wednesday, June 13, 2007
Now that summer classes have begun, rhythm has returned to the Kansas Memorial Union, although it is a rhythm different from the steady traffic of the fall and spring semesters.
Emily Willis, owner of the Salon Hawk, said that for the first two weeks following the end of classes in May she had to look out the window to make sure that the world hadn’t ended.
“The only person I saw was the FedEx guy,” Willis said.
With the general student population diminished after spring classes let out, Willis said that business was slower.
“We seem to squeak by in the summer,” Willis said. “But business picks up again in August.”
Ruth Lichtwardt, a 19-year employee of Oread Books, said though traffic is generally slower in the summer, it is far from dead.
“We’ll have large groups of people who come for New Student Orientation,” she said. “A lot of people who haven’t come through before are trying to learn their way around because they’re new.”
With books on display that discuss college survival and getting through freshman year, Oread Books caters to the incoming students.
“In the summer we sell a lot of Lawrence maps and give away a lot of campus maps,” Lichtwardt said.
Sales in general are lower, however, with the decrease in campus population. Lichtwardt said that business is “more sporadic during the summer with little lulls and bursts.”
Rebecca Swearingen, business manager with Union Programs, said that though the summers are slower, that doesn’t mean that nothing is going on.
“Full-time employees are just as busy in the summer time as they are in the spring and fall,” she said. “We can actually set and focus on one project as opposed to multitasking. The summer allows that.”
With fewer students coming in, Swearingen said it was a good time for the full-time Union employees to settle in and begin focusing on planning for the upcoming year.
— Edited by Joe Caponio
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