Course requests double this week

Professors turned in almost 600 course requests to the bookstore in the last week, an influx that the bookstore president and ASPSU attribute to the student government Textbook Alert Campaign.

Professors submitted almost twice the number of requests in the last week than the bookstore had received as of Nov. 13, the start of the campaign. The campaign was designed to get professors motivated to submit their course requests for textbooks on time, bringing in more used textbooks to the bookstore.

As of Monday, a total of 1,296 out of a projected 2,015 requests have been collected for winter term courses.

If a professor does not submit a course request on time, the university bookstore can only order new books instead of offering used copies. Used copies are only available to universities on a first-come, first-serve basis.

“I feel the ASPSU Textbook Alert Campaign was effective and elevated PSU faculty awareness,” said Ken Brown, president and CEO of the PSU Bookstore.

Rudy Soto, president of Associated Students of Portland State University, said the campaign has been a success for PSU students.

“The Textbook Alert Campaign was a starting point with measurable results that shows the strength of the PSU student voice,” Soto said in a press release.

ASPSU hopes to continue to promote textbook affordability by supporting plans for a university online textbook-exchange and working to increase the number of textbook reserves available in the PSU Millar Library.

Ryan Klute, legislative affairs director of ASPSU, said that while it’s exciting to see so many professors respond to the campaign, student government will continue to promote textbook affordability.

“Students will see an increase of used textbooks for winter quarter,” Klute said. “We’re going to continue this campaign for next quarter as well.”

The success of the campaign is just the beginning, Klute said.

“This is not mission accomplished,” he said. “It’s the first step.”