PSU Magazine Winter 2006

w hen you think about the pictures of floods you've seen in the past year, think of the PSU Bookstore. As one of the oldest campus institu– tions, the bookstore was in the path of the devastating 1948 Vanport flood . Not only did it survive-unlike Van– port itself-but today the PSU Book– store is emerging as a model of adaptation during tough economic times. The strange thing is that over the years, the bookstore has flooded repeatedly-in different locations, under different managers, due to dif– ferent causes. Some say it's almost as if the universe is trying to make some cosmic point. But what? ew noticed this fall as the bookstore reorganized its tax structure, morphing from a "co-op" to a nonprofit "founda– tion." Yet it was a watershed event. The PSU Bookstore was one of the oldest college co-ops in the nation ; it sur– vived even as the venerable Yale Uni– versity co-op went bankrupt after 138 years. In contrast, the PSU Bookstore's reorganization managed to preserve a grassroots structure and financial strength. Run by a student-controlled board of directors that also includes staff and alumni- as it has from the beginning-the bookstore's manage– ment is redefining its business model, while at the same time taking a stand against "privatization" of university facilities. "I think the real high point is that we've survived here for 59 years as a freestanding, independent institution on campus, when there's been a lot of corporatization of college bookstores," says bookstore manager Ken Brown. "The board has been strongly focused on keeping it local." ortland State's origins are humble and the bookstore's beginnings are humbler still. Started by students Bill McLeod and Bob Evans, the first student store oper– ated out of an apartment closet in Van– port, a World War ll housing project turned college campus. At its peak 20 PSU MAGAZINE WINTER 2006 Through floods, moves, and reorganization, the PSU Bookstore is a survivor. Vanport housed 40,000 Kaiser Com– pany shipyard workers, making it the second largest community in Oregon. ln its second life, students, mostly veterans, filled the two-story buildings, each crammed with eight furnished apartments. Classes were held in the former city's common buildings: a hos– pital, shopping center, recreation hall, and the nursery and elementary schools. In November 1947 the co-op a goo administration building in St. Johns. moved into one of these building as the Vanport College Cooperative Asso– ciation, an even grander name than the college's own, which was Vanport Extension Center. "There weren't as many books as there were diapers and baby formula– things that students with young fami– lies would need to get through ," Brown explains. The bookstore's board of directors modeled the co-op's structure after By I re n p residence in Lincoln Hall, but textbook sales at the beginning of each term were held in the gym. Bill Lemman was assistant business manager in 1956. He left that same year but returned 13 years later to the top finance post at PSU.