Despite the lobbying efforts made by the Associated Student Organization, ASO, the high cost of textbooks may linger for semesters to come.
Phillip Gomez, ASO president, and Bryce Matson, student trustee, joined representatives from all levels of higher education last week in Washington, D.C. to discuss the continuous rise in textbooks prices.
College students across the nation are waiting for legislators to create a process that will investigate publisher practices.
“As soon as we see it, whenever it comes out, we will be jumping on that to lobby for it,” Matson said.
Until a proposal is created, student representatives’ only duty is to present the need for the bill.
“All we can do is provide legislators with information on how students are suffering now with the different textbook pricing,” Gomez said.
Gomez and Matson lobbied for legislators to follow up on a bill that was introduced more than two years ago by congressman David Wu, D-Ore. and urge Rep. Jane Harmen, D-Calif, to co-sponsor the bill concerning publisher practices.
“We were just bringing it to their attention by putting a face to numbers and putting a face with names,” Matson said.
The bill was assigned to the jurisdiction of the House Committee on Education in November 2003; since then, nothing has happened regarding publisher practices.
Beginning March 2004, an investigation has been ongoing on publisher practices. The bill to regulate the publishers’ practices will not be reintroduced until the investigation is complete.
“We are waiting to see what the reports say. After looking at the reports, Congress will take action legislatively,” Matson said.
It is not known when the investigation will end.
“You don’t know for sure. They can come out with it tomorrow, or they can come out with it in a month. It just all depends,” Matson said.
The D.C. trip served as a venue for the students to get their points across.
“There were representatives from the community college systems, the UC systems and the CSU systems. We all lobbied together because we are all suffering the same way,” Gomez said.
Besides lobbying, there is nothing to do but wait until the bill pass through legislation.
“So once we see what will be taking place, whether it be this semester or next semester’s ASO, we will definitely be lobbying on that point,” Matson said.
For half of all full-time student enrolled in a general education course, the cost of textbooks exceeds the cost of tuition.
Saul Gonzalez, undecided major, is a full-time student who paid about $300 for his textbooks this semester alone.
“It’s expensive as hell. And I hate the fact that you can buy a book at the beginning of the semester and turn around to sell it at the end, but you can’t because they have already come out with a new edition,” Gonzalez said.
This fact becomes a problem for a lot of the students who rely on the money they make by selling their books to buy new textbooks for the next semester.
“Now you have lost all that money because the bookstore won’t buy it back,” Gonzalez said.
ASO hopes this trip, along with a recent Sacramento trip, will spur legislators to take action on regulating textbook publisher practices.
“We can actually make it real that these are problems that students are facing and it’s not making higher education accessible to a lot of students,” Matson said.
