Although the Coop is competitive in music prices--it will match any competitor's price on a CD or tape and has a 15 percent members' discount--it cannot touch the kind of selection at neighboring Tower Records of HMV. This selection problem is not limited to the music department.

"The Coop can compete with them price-wise, but they can't compete with them selection-wise," Dickson says.

The Bottom Line

Members of the board say the Coop must make changes soon in order to pull out of the red.

"Last year was the first year that I can ever remember that the Coop had a loss," says Dickson, who has been on the Board of Directors since the early 1980s. "You can't operate a business at a loss, particularly when you return most of the [money] that exceed[s] your expenses in a year to the members of the Coop."

When the Coop makes no profit, the members get no rebate. Last fall was the first time in institutional memory when members did not receive a rebate. In 1989, the rebate was 10 percent; in 1993, it was one percent.

"Basically, the Coop is not in the best shape right now, and there has been a lot of talk on how to refocus," says Daniel N. Saul '95, an outgoing member of the Board of Directors and a Crimson editor.

Options for that "refocusing" include cutting or adding departments, downsizing departments or the entire store and leasing out parts of the store to different businesses, members of the Board of Directors say.

Moel says he wants to look into a front-end refund instead of a back-end rebate.

But Murphy says that option has been discussed before, and dismissed.

"The basis of the Coop is that you get it at the end; you bear the risk," Murphy says. "We try to give a lot of good deals during the year in addition to the rebate."

Moel also says he would like the Board to decide "how much of the Coop should be dedicated to members and how much to non-members."

These changes have also been discussed before.

One student member of the board in 1987-88 said it had discussed tailoring the women's clothing departments to more modern tastes.

"The [women's] clothing line was pretty much the same from the 1950s," says Tamara Woolfork '88.