Letter to the Editor

Dear Editor:

I was glad to see Kat Saunders’ piece on the new rules mandating 40% of purchases from SWaM vendors, but I was disappointed by the lack of depth.
While I share Joe Mollo’s frustration at not being able to run to Target, the problems run much deeper than that.  The system is rife with inefficiency.
At the chemistry department, we have found that we must now purchase items from vendors who are serving as middle-men for larger vendors who we used to be able to deal with directly.  The middle vendors charge more and are slower, since now we are not purchasing from the big guys like Fisher Scientific, but from people who take our order, purchase it from Fisher, and then mark up the price.
This is bad fiscal policy on the part of the State, and it would be nice to see some real investigative journalism about this.

Dr. Charles Sharpless is an Assistant Professor of Chemistry.