BY JONATHAN REESIn the last week of classes of the spring 2025 semester, our administration announced a deal that would allow Barnes & Noble to take over our university bookstore. After a week of stormy faculty senate debate, in which my colleagues pointed out many, many problems with this arrangement, the university announced that they were going ahead with it anyway and it started this semester. Over the summer we learned that the university signed a contract with Barnes & Noble before they ever announced that this was a possibility. With regard to academic freedom, this isn’t a question of what we teach, but how we teach it. Now, the university, through Barnes & Noble, wants to collect $75 per student per class for a resource that should cost our students nothing.