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University of Nebraska-Lincoln athletes can not only pass on the field and court, but sometimes in the bookstore line.
A long line of students waiting to buy books on Monday was kept orderly by rope barriers and the appeasement of giveaways handed out by book store workers.
In the shorter line at one reserved register, no barriers or freebies were necessary, though students may have had to literally jump hurdles to be admitted to it.
Only some scholarship athletes were allowed to purchase books at that register, to the dismay of unaware non-athletes.
The register is not for all athletes, said University Bookstore director John Parish, only those whose scholarships cover their books.
Some athletes have to wait in the longer line despite having made the team.
The others have a separate register, Parish said, because textbooks for scholarship athletes are distributed differently than books for most students, including other scholarship recipients such as honors students.
Even though honors students also have a book scholarship, they wait in the regular line if they did not request to have the books sent to Neihardt Residence Hall.
The bookstore plans to make delivery available to all residence halls, Parish said. The honors program is a good control group to test the reserve-and-deliver system on.
Athletes don't reserve their books, Parish said. They usually get them off the shelf and then go to the special register. But to buy books in the short line, the student must have a confirmed athletic scholarship.
To get new books, scholarship athletes also need to verify that they returned all textbooks used during the previous semester.
Separate registers may make getting through these hoops more efficient.
"Instead of going through any one of twenty registers they go to one," Parish said, "Which means they wait longer than you a lot of the time."
Nate Luginbill, a freshman general studies major, found himself unable to purchase books at the first line he went to.
"The school seems to cater to athletes," he said.
Upon discovering an athlete-exclusive line existed, non-athletes were shown to the back of the regular, longer one.
"That happened to, like, ten people," said Zach Potter, a junior communications major and defensive end for the NU football team. "They would wait for five or 10 minutes (in the wrong line)."
rachelalbin@dailynebraskan.com
