On Thursday, Aug. 26, the Weinberg Memorial Library will be hosting a "Late Night at Scranton" gaming event that is co-sponsored by CHEW. The event will be held in the newly renovated 24-hour room of the library and will be held from 10 p.m. to 2 a.m. All students, staff and faculty are welcome to join us for pizza, wings, snacks and multiple Amazon gift card prizes. Also, there will be Mario Kart, Smash Bros. and Wii Fit on three Nintendo Wii systems and there will be Rock Band 2 set-up on a Playstation 3. For additional information on this event, please contact George.Aulisio@scranton.edu.

We are pleased to announce that The University of Scranton bookstore will begin offering textbook rental services this fall. Rent-A-Text will offer students upwards of 50 percent off the price of new textbooks and will provide students with an affordable alternative to rising education costs.

“We are eager to launch Rent-A-Text because we are committed to providing students with affordable textbook choices,” said Don Drasba of The University of Scranton bookstore. “This program will enable our university students to fully participate in the revolution that is occurring in the purchase of college textbooks. 

The University of Scranton’s textbook rental program will:

• Be available to students in store and online with in store pick up
• Allow students to chose a preferred form of payment, including financial aid and campus cards
• Allow students the freedom to highlight and take notes all within the normal wear and tear associated with coursework
• Give students the choice to buy their textbook at the end of the term if they want to keep the book

Rent-A-Text is available through our existing partnership with Follett Higher Education Group, and the program is based on Follett’s comprehensive pilot program that saved students nearly $2 million on their course materials in just one semester. More than 90 percent of students surveyed who rented textbooks expressed satisfaction with the pilot program.

“We have been at the forefront of cost-savings programs for more than a century,” said Thomas A. Christopher, President of Follett Higher Education Group. “Helping to reduce the costs of higher education is part of our mission and we look forward to working with The University of Scranton to deliver substantial textbook savings to students.”

Look for more information about Rent-A-Text in the campus store. In the meantime, check out www.rent-a-text.com or www.facebook.com/rentatext.

If you would like to join the University team, visit www.komennepa.org and follow the directions below:

Team Name: Type "University of Scranton"

Team Company: Choose "University of Scranton" 

Team Division: Choose "School" 

Click on: "Search for Team" 

Scroll down to bottom of the page:

Under search results to the right of "The University of Scranton" click on join and fill in your information. Where it asks if you are a new user or returning user, click new user. Everyone is a new user because this is as of April 2010.

Once you have registered, e-mail gavinl3@scranton.edu with your T-shirt size because we will be getting “Team” T-shirts again. We encourage everyone to register online, but if for some reason this is impossible, contact gavinl3@scranton.edu. The deadline to sign up is Friday, Sept. 3.