Editorial: With textbooks, nothing changes

Talk of making textbooks cheaper ebbs and flows with every new student government.

Candidates damn corporations that gouge students with pricey textbooks, during elections in the spring. The candidates sometimes present noble ideas, such as starting a textbook exchange program. Other times, they just make empty claims: We will make textbooks affordable.

By fall, when classes start, members realize the impenetrable quagmire that overpriced textbooks present. They see that it is difficult to accomplish anything in student government, let alone start an exchange from scratch-there is too little time, too much work and far too many demands.

This year, Rudy Soto and his staff have, as of yet, fallen short of at least one high aspiration. They promised a textbook exchange program, and so far they have developed only a hurried campaign to make teachers turn in their winter term requests for textbooks to the bookstore on time. If they do that, student government and the PSU bookstore both say the store can sell more used books.

It’s a great starting place-most of us always prefer buying a cheaper used book than something that is pretty, glossy and astronomically expensive. However, ASPSU’s route to an affordable solution has alienated many professors, and it lacks a sustainable answer.

ASPSU can take this as a lesson: Telling professors they’re procrastinators who are costing us money, and demanding change, is not effective. Asking them to help us by turning in these requests on time, which will save us money, works.

It is good that ASPSU has been having students hand their professors postcards, requesting that they turn in their textbook orders. In that vein, people should be making requests, even incessant requests at that, but not demands.

It is true that most faculty members haven’t been on top of things: Only 887 out of 2015 winter term textbook requests had been submitted by Nov. 13, according to the president of the bookstore. It almost certainly isn’t because they’re procrastinating, however, but because they are overworked and probably because they did not know the deadlines were so important.

So, professors, please do listen to ASPSU and turn in your textbook requests on time. We know you’re busy, we know you’re overworked and underpaid, and we know that you already do so much for us. But this is a small piece that is an easy fit into a much larger puzzle.

And ASPSU must devise some kind of program that is sustainable. It’s difficult, but it is necessary. Students have started exchange programs in the past, but nothing has lasted. Use student fees, and run the program with a student staff-just do something to make a program at PSU that will make textbooks, and an education, more affordable. It is remarkable that a program does not exist, and it will be a travesty if one does not start soon.