From the Princeton Weekly Bulletin October 6, 1997
Hungry? Sleepy? Bored?
Student agencies offer solutions and provide
business experience for undergraduates
By Caroline Moseley
Are you hungry? Call the Tiger Pizza Agency. Are you sleepy? Buy a futon from the Dorm Furnishings Agency. Are you bored? Rent a video from P-Flix ("offering over 1,300 of the most popular movies"), slap it in the VCR you rented from Tiger Rentals and invite the gang over. When they arrive in your room or office (tastefully decorated with orange and black items from the Princeton Outfitters and Souvenir Agency), you can greet them wearing the tux you rented from the Special Occasions Agency.
There isn't much you need on this campus you can't get from one of the Princeton Student Agencies. These entirely student-run businesses offer faculty, staff and students an impressively wide range of goods and services. The Agencies office, located in Clio Hall, is part of the Student Employment Office; both operate under the aegis of Undergraduate Financial Aid.
600 students employed
There are 18 student agencies this year, says director Thomas Bates. This represents some consolidation of last year's 35 agencies. "For example," he says, "the TV-VCR Agency joined with the Refrigerator Agency to become Tiger Rentals. The Futon Agency, among several others, joined the Dorm Furniture Agency." The number of services provided has not decreased, he points out, nor has the number of students employed--about 600.
Each agency is operated by a student manager. "A manager has to be 150 percent reliable," says Maria Doerfler '99, manager of the Campus News-paper Delivery Agency, which supplies campus subscribers with the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Daily Princetonian and USA Today.
"Although the agency office provides guidance, managers are responsible for the success or failure of their operations," she says. "The buck stops at my desk."
Most business decisions are made by the manager, who is responsible for hiring, firing, marketing, purchasing, maintaining inventory, handling employee payroll, and submitting monthly and year-end financial reports.
This all means a lot of work--for Doerfler, about 40 hours the first week of school and 10 to 15 hours per week the rest of the year. And, as she points out, "A manager who has to be up and running at 5:30 a.m. doesn't party until the wee hours."
It also means a lot of valuable real-world experience. While Doerfler doesn't expect to become an entrepreneur ("I'm planning on attending law school"), working with the agency since freshman year has taught her "skills necessary in any field: negotiating contracts, juggling finances, supervising people."
The key to a successful agency, she says, is "whether or not a manager cares for the agency and is able to pass this sense of responsibility on to employees."
$1,400,000 in gross sales
Many agencies, such as the furniture agency, do most of their business during the first weeks of term; others, like the pizza agency, are active all year long. Brendan Elliott '98 manages the Shipping and Packing Agency, which, though open all year in the basement of Dod Hall, is busiest at the end of the school year.
"We offer all UPS services to students, faculty and staff," he says. "We sell boxes, tape, bubble wrap and poster tubes. We also offer packing service." Toward year's end, however, "almost every student on campus is shipping at least a few belongings home. We stay open long after midnight."
The time commitment "can be trying," he admits. "Customer service, especially at the end of the year, is the most challenging part of the job."
Though Elliott, like most students, started with his agency "because I needed money," he soon came to enjoy "the business aspect of the situation. Rarely does one get to run a small business in such a stable environment." He has found it rewarding to "watch plans take shape, all of which build a better business for the University community."
And business is good. The Student Agencies posted $1,400,000 in gross sales for FY 1996-97. Of that amount, says Bates, "about one-third goes to the student workers and the remainder back into the businesses--for purchasing inventory, maintenance of the Student Agencies five vehicles and other agency expenses." Student workers receive an hourly wage; managers receive a salary and a bonus that is performance-based. Of student workers, approximately 38 percent are on financial aid.
Benefit as well as profit
All agencies, says Bates, originate with student ideas. "We look for ideas that will benefit the University community, as well as be profitable," notes Robert Cunningham, director of Student Employment. The student makes a proposal and "does a mini-marketing survey to determine if the agency is likely be profitable," says Bates, "and to make sure it doesn't compete directly with any other student agency. If it looks like it will work, we approve it."
A recent example is the Student Golf Cart Agency. New last year, this agency offers "speedy and painless on-campus transportation" to students who need it, perhaps because of an athletic injury ("must have authorization from McCosh Health Center" cautions the ad).
Not all proposals become agencies, however. Among the ideas that died on paper, according to Bates are "a Student Transcript Agency, for which a student proposed to take notes in classes and sell them to students who didn't attend" and "a Parking Meter Agency, which offered to run to where your car was parked and feed the meter."
Students receive training in their particular line of work, some informal and on-the-job, and some formal: the Moving and Storage Agency workers attend a seminar given by Budd Van Lines, in which they learn how to lift and move heavy objects and how to store them safely in trucks.
Agency workers also have two informational sessions devoted to customer relations, because, Bates says, "At the Student Agencies, customer satisfaction is one of our main goals."
To learn more about the Student Agencies, call 258-4906. Or visit their web site at http://www.princeton.edu/~studage/.
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