“Saturday and Monday, it was basically nonstop till a half-hour before quitting,” Mary Larson, manager of the Textbook Center, said.

Temperatures soared in the TBC, with the air conditioning suspected to be shut off in Doudna Hall over the weekend. Lines stretched up the stairs all the way back to the vending machines by the fine arts department office, Larson said.

“I had kids say, ‘It’s so hot in here, I think I’m going to pass out,” Joyce Loeffelholz, assistant manager of the TBC, said. “You couldn’t even get down the aisles to get your books.”

“It was really busy, really hot, crowded,” Elizabeth Neis, senior mathematics major, said. “And stressful.”

So went rush week at UW-Platteville.

Referred to as such by college bookstores across the nation, the beginning of the semester marks a time when virtually every college student on campus comes to get their books, Larson said. For fall 2007, the TBC opened on Aug. 29. On Aug. 31, 12,000 books had been signed out; by Sept. 3, two business days later, that number more than doubled to 25,000.

Some students volunteered during freshman orientation to help manage the chaos, Larson said.

“On Saturday the freshmen came through,” Neis said. “They didn’t really know how the system worked, though the upperclassmen don’t always know either.”

Gamma Phi Beta, a campus sorority, helped the new and confused students locate their books in the crowded basement.

“They’re pretty good troopers considering the amount of time they have to spend repeating the same thing,” Larson said.

Larson, Loeffelholz and four students are the only employees of the TBC, except during book check-out and check-in times, when employees from other parts of campus come to help.

“Checking in is really bad,” Neis said. “I told this person they were going to have to pay for a damaged book. They said, ‘It was like that when I got it,’ but it was still wet.”

“If someone has damaged books, our staff really hates telling them that,” Larson said. “I remind my staff, keep your cool, you can just take care of one person at a time.”