Slop University's Strategic Plan 2026-2031 puts a hand-lettered board at every point of sale and states every fee in whole dollars, after a market trial found no difference between two ways of writing a price.
A five-year Strategic Plan follows a season of alternate Saturdays at four markets, where the cents at the end of a price sold nothing either way
The University’s Strategic Plan 2026-2031 begins with a stick of chalk. “The Chalkboard A-Frame as Control Condition”, released today by the School of Emergent Priorities, takes a single finding from four weekly markets and arranges the University’s prices around it: a stall’s board, written as $4.95 on one Saturday and $5 on the next, sold the same number of units either way.
A price is a short sentence, and it was a pleasure to watch so many of them being written. We are glad the result was a quiet one.
— Hedvig Anyanwu, Doctoral Candidate, School of Emergent Priorities
The plan was developed by Ms Anyanwu with Tove Ilesanmi and Sunniva Balogun, both Doctoral Candidates in the School. It carries the market trial across the University’s own counters, windows and portals, each of which will state its charges on a board lettered by a named hand. Where the board and the billing system differ, the board will stand and the system will be corrected.
On the strength of the finding, every fee, fine and charge in the University’s schedules will be stated to the nearer dollar, and no committee paper may cite a price ending as grounds for a decision. The trial itself is lodged with the Office of Research Outputs as it was found, with no subgroup table to follow it.
Ms Ilesanmi said the University Hand, a stroke standard taught to every commencing Master of Priority Studies student, was “a pleasure to draw up and a pleasure to see in use”.
The plan also commits the University to lend boards, chalk and cloths to traders across the region. The University is proud to be a neighbour that arrives early and leaves the pavement as it found it.
The full plan is available from the University’s research repository under an open licence, doi:10.5555/slop.m4wl4h.