The contracts for vendor kiosks outside campus locations such as LuValle Commons and Ackerman Union have been terminated for the remainder of winter quarter, according to UCLA Store officials.
Peggy Danielson, store manager at LuValle Commons, said she received the instructions last Friday to end the usual vendors’ services outside the store.
Danielson said Patrick Healey, the UCLA Store general merchandise director, told her to notify the vendors that their services would no longer be needed and not to schedule them anymore.
“We were told that the decision was made not to continue with them,” she said.
But Danielson added that she did not know who made the original decision to discontinue the vendors’ services or why that decision had been made.
Carol Stogsdill, executive director of media relations for the chancellor’s office, said no one in that office knew anything about the change.
The vendors, who typically sell items such as jewelry, purses and posters, were absent from outside LuValle after Friday, with a UCLA store set up in their place.
Danielson said she did not know why the decision to terminate the vendors had been made, but has not yet seen much of a reaction from students.
“Students haven’t really been asking about it,” she said.
But Janika Mohan, a first-year English student, said she was less than excited when she heard the vendors’ services had been cancelled, as she has bought items from the vendors and has spent time browsing through their merchandise in the past.
“I really liked those things,” she said in reference to the vendor kiosks.
Mohan said she found them to be nice places to pass time between classes and find inexpensive jewelry.
Having spent “a lot of money there,” she said she believes it is unfair to limit students’ and consumers’ options.
She also said she believes the vendors should have the right to have a kiosk on campus.
Ryan Collins, a third-year English student, also said he believes the university should allow the vendors to stay, even though he has not made much use of them in the past.
“UCLA is a public campus ““ if the public is allowed to study in our libraries than they should be allowed to vend on our campus,” he said.
Though he said he has little use for the jewelry and merchandise the vendors carry, he added that he cares about the change on principle.