It’s seven in the morning. While students are getting ready to go to school, the textbook center manager, Sandy Weinketz, is at school preparing for the day.

“It’s quiet time for me. I like to get things up and running. I work on tasks that I really need to focus on, [such as] getting a definite list of books needed for second semester or contacting book buyers for obsolete books,” Weinketz said.

Obsolete books are books that the school is planning to sell or donate. When the Chicago Public Schools strike began, it became apparent to Weinketz that one of the issues was that they did not have adequate books for their classes. After realizing this, Weinketz sent out an email to the entire staff asking if any of them had any CPS contacts in order to negotiate the donation of the obsolete books. She received 24 contacts, and now the school may be donating books of various subjects, from physics to Spanish, to schools in Chicago.

The Textbook Center is also where people go to get temporary IDs. On many days, they collect hundreds of dollars just from temps which are $.50, as opposed to regular IDs, which cost $5.

“The [new] rule is that you can buy 20 temps per semester. But once you get to 20, you either have to buy a new ID or go to your dean and call your parents,” she said. “As a parent, seeing that the economy is so bad, it doesn’t make sense that kids waste a total of ten dollars on a piece of paper that they end up throwing away.”

Weinketz feels that students need better preparation for college. Universities do no give out temps when you need them, and in college, you need your ID for almost everything, so it’s important for students to get used to carrying an ID everywhere.