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E-mail: editor@dailyemerald.com
Online: www.dailyemerald.com
Wednesday, October 1, 2003
Oregon Daily Emerald
COMMENTARY
Editor in Chief:
Brad Schmidt
Managing Editor:
Ian Tobias Montry
Editorial Editor:
Travis Willse
EDITORIAL
Options to lower
textbook prices
exist at all levels
As this week has probably unpleasantly reminded you
(or shocked you, if you're a freshman), college textbooks
can be nearly prohibitively expensive. Some students
scrape by at the beginning of the term, shelling out an ad
ditional $300 on top of ballooning tuition — which this
year for the first time topped $5,000 for the typical resident
student. Others sometimes register for, or drop classes,
based on the cost of the textbooks.
Some texts are massive, and massively expensive: The
University Bookstore's most expensive offering will leave
a $198 dent in a biology or chemistry major's bank ac
count. For a student taking 16 credit hours, that adds 48
percent to the cost of the class.
In light of the high cost of textbooks — particularly
when their buyers are students already largely financially
restricted — the bookstore graciously offered a promotion
that ran through Wednesday wherein the bookstore would
give 13 randomly selected students their coursebooks for
free. But, of course, the bookstore cannot afford to give
away texts to every student.
Here are several suggestions to alleviate fiscal pressure
on the University's other 20,000 students:
• Departments should strongly consider cost when se
lecting primary texts. Many, if not all programs on campus,
likely understand the importance of thriftiness to students
and already factor pricing into decisions, but the cost of
certain books suggests that monetary considerations some
times take a back seat.
• Professors should assign secondary texts cautiously,
too. Certainly, most classes need at least one book for
grounding discussion or homework. But there's usually lit
tle reason to assign a second "required" text from which
only one chapter will be assigned. If the content is essen
tial, perhaps the professor, or even a GTF, could create a
packet or a handout that covers the same material. Not
only would the packet be more finely tuned to the class'
specific themes and requirements, but it could be easily ad
justed and re-used every term or year.
• Textbook publishing companies should strive to min
imize differences among editions, as long as such conser
vatism doesn't hurt the applicability of the material. Re
vamping texts every few years makes sense in rapidly
changing fields like computer science or multimedia de
sign, but rewriting swaths of Chinese history books or ar
bitrarily rewriting problems in a math book without
changing content only makes it needlessly more difficult
for cash-strapped students to save money by tracking down
used, older editions.
Unfortunately, this suggestion clashes with book pub
lishers' interests: Publishers now cycle new editions on a
biennial basis because people stop buying new copies of
an edition once used ones become available, Chris Stan
dish, the bookstore's book division manager, said.
In the meantime, the texts professors assign are mostly
out of your control. But there are at least a few options for
cutting costs: The bookstore sells used textbooks for 25
percent off. Smith Family Bookstore and other local used
book vendors sell at discounts, too. Finally, online services
like TextbookX.com and Half.com often offer books at a
slick discount, but you have to wait (and sometimes pay)
for shipping.
EDITORIAL POLICY
This editorial represents the opinion of the Emerald
editorial board. Responses can be sent to letters
@dailyemerald.com. Letters to the editor and guest
commentaries are encouraged.
EDITORIAL BOARD
Brad Schmidt
Editor in Chief
Jan Tobias Montry
Managing Editor
Aimee Rudin
Freelance Editor
Ayisha Yahya
News Editor
Travis Wiilse
Editorial Editor
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This time of year always makes me
physically ill. Right as school starts back
up, sports are everywhere. The baseball
season is drawing toward its celebrated
conclusion, football is picking up serious
steam, basketball season is but a short
month from tip-off and those stupid stock
cars are still pointlessly zooming around
in circles.
With the Ducks' recent win against
Michigan and their subsequent appearance
on the cover of Sports Illustrated, I've found
all the sports hubbub to be too much. Late
ly I've taken to distracting myself with vi
sions of sugarplums and a world in which
people actually give a damn.
Join me now as we pretend we live in a
country where its citizens are engaged and
motivated to take part in the decisions af
fecting their daily lives. Imagine, for a mo
ment, a system of politics modeled after
our major sports leagues.
Instead of using precious tax dollars to
build athletic arenas — which the National
Center for Policy Analysis has shown to be
of no great benefit to the venues' commu
nities — we would construct great stadiums
that house professional political matches.
Every Sunday, hundreds of thousands
of spectators would flock to these magnif
icent structures to cheer on their favorite
politicians, pundits and policies — occa
sionally they might even want to throw a
random beer bottle.
Kids would collect and trade politician
cards. Dozens of channels, with their
Joe Bechard
Cultural obstetrician
glitzy production capabilities, would
broadcast the events with all-star color
commentators and sideline reporters.
In-depth analysis, instant replay,
pregame statistics, field microphones and
a nifty pen that highlights key plays for the
viewing audience would accompany all
broadcasts and add to viewers' compre
hension of the many complexities and nu
ances of the competition.
Yes, politicians and lobbyists will get
the most scrutiny in my little reality. The
paparazzi would chase them all over, ex
posing their secret meetings and other
professional improprieties. Entire sections
of newspapers would be dedicated solely
to politics, and the participants' statistics
would be posted daily for all to see.
But my world will never exist, and part of
the reason is we're all so damn distracted by
stardom and entertainment. Society and the
well-being of the people sitting next to you
are of much lesser importance than how
fast Rusty Wallace tore through 20 tires and
several tanks of gas or how many RBIs Alex
Rodriguez hits in nine innings. According to
Knight Ridder, the five major professional
sports leagues — hockey, NASCAR, basket
ball, baseball and football — will see rev
enues increase by more than 50 percent
from 2001 to 2006. All the money, work
and mental capacity that went into these
leagues is wasted on something that matters
little in the big picture of life.
How often do you have to listen to
some guy spit sports statistics or see some
one wearing officially licensed merchan
dise? How many people do you notice
turning straight to the sports pages of their
newspaper?
I'm not saying sports are inherently evil,
but they are the perfect springboard for
advertisers and those who wish to distract
the common man's attention from other,
more important goings-on.
The Heritage Foundation last year quot
ed Baltimore Ravens owner Art Modell
saying: "The pride and presence of a pro
fessional football team is far more impor
tant than 30 libraries, and I say that with
all due respect to the learning process."
If we valued more humanistic endeav
ors and scrutinized our politicians the way
we do athletes and superstars, this coun
try would be much better off.
Contact the columnist
at joebechard@dailyemerald.com.
His opinions do not necessarily represent
those of the Emerald.
LETTER TO THE EDITOR
Remember to question
advertising, authority
Soon a new school year will begin for mil
lions of children across America. They will
ride along roads dedicated to Martin Luther
King Jr. and go to schools named for him.
Forty years ago in rural Louisiana, my school
bus drove past a large billboard with his pic
ture on it However it was not a tribute.
The billboard showed King sitting in a
school classroom. At the top of the bill
board, blazed in large red letters was "Mar
tin Luther King in a Communist Training
School." Our school bus passed that bill
board every morning and afternoon for two
years. Lots of my classmates and some of our
teachers agreed with it
Each day 1 studied the picture of King in
that school. That billboard became my first
lesson in political advertising and my first
memory of questioning authority. I was
about twelve years old, and I realized that
there was nothing in the classroom that
showed it was run by communists. There
were no pictures of Marx or Lenin or Chair
man Mao. The photo could have been taken
in any schoolroom in the world.
Today, American students study the life of
Martin Luther King. But forty years ago it was
much different. The billboard of King taught
me something valuable that I did not learn
in the classroom: to question authority, es
pecially its advertising. Many things have
changed for the better over the last forty
years, but we still need to question authority
and political advertising. I think Dr. King
would want us to do that.
Steve Williamson
assistant researcher
Center for Advanced Technology
in Education
College of Education