Texas State to offer a solution to overpriced textbook costs

By Lucciana Choueiry News Contributor

Beginning in fall 2023, Texas State will partner with BookSmart in an effort to alleviate financial stress on students with regard to paying for required textbooks.

Currently, students spend an estimated $790 on books and supplies in a nine-month period for all their classes. Many students end up buying books through other, more expensive platforms once the semesters start and the bookstore runs out.

Madison Garza, a nursing junior, said she spent $450 this semester on books from Amazon and from previous students who had taken the same classes.

"If I can rent a book, I’ll rent a book, but most of the time we have to write in our books so I can’t really do that," Garza said. "Buying books on Amazon is also always more expensive than renting so I always try to get them from seniors."

Vice President of Finance and Support Eric Algoe said the biggest issue with textbooks is providing the best materials for a reasonable price.

"We want to balance that ability for faculty to select the best materials that are going to help our students the most with the fact that some of these materials can be very expensive," Algoe said.

As a nursing student, Garza said she is required to have eight textbooks that run at high prices. She said cost is one of the biggest problems she runs into when finding her books.

"I think to help students there should be textbook scholarships and stuff like that because if you’re adding it up, that is nearly $1,000 per year for books, which is very expensive considering we are also balancing tuition," Garza said.

BookSmart is a digital textbook program that claims to provide undergraduates with more cost-efficient and quicker access to all materials required by their courses. Students would pay $249 per semester and have all their materials accessible to them digitally through Canvas. The program is estimated to save students approximately $12 million in its first year compared to purchasing a newly printed book.

Vice President of Student Success Cynthia Hernandez said it is important for students to not only have books accessible to them but also be able to get them before their classes begin so they don’t fall behind.

FROM FRONT PROTEST

MOVE Texas' Hays County Regional Coordinator Jay Beck said that the main goal of the event was to promote education.

"We want to just make sure that people can actually see the place where change is made and laws are made," Beck said. "We want them to see that we have a right to be in this space just as much as any lawmakers do."

After training, students walked to the Capitol together to listen to speakers from different organizations in attendance. They held signs in the air and ensured that their cheers were heard across the building.

"We had people talk about their experience in voting and why being equitably represented matters

From Page 2 Academics

across all issues," Sanchez said. "Voting is a very intersectional issue because it affects all the other issues that matter to young people in Texas."

Beck said that young people speaking out at the rotunda and being involved is very important to MOVE Texas' cause.

"It's super important for I think young people and students especially to see that not only this change happening but we can be a part of that change in really significant ways," Beck said.

Elle Johnson of the Austin Liberation Youth Movement spoke about the juvenile criminal justice system in their speech.

"It should not be up to the state to decide what to do with our loved ones," Johnson said. "This room is full of youth ready to make a change."

Hernandez spoke to a group of student leaders who said there is a struggle to find course materials for reasonable prices so they resort to using untrustworthy sites that can provide free PDF versions of texts, but often end up spreading viruses to students' devices.

"We really want to take one less thing off their plate of having to figure out where they can get the most inexpensive materials," Hernandez said. "BookSmart really simplifies this process and mitigates these barriers for students."

This is a "voice in a choice" program, which means students would also be able to opt out of BookSmart if they feel they would save more money and access books easier without it.

Assistant Vice President for Financial Aid and Scholarships Christopher Murr said the cost of attendance for students is based on the published cost of tuition and fees as well as periodic student surveys regarding the expenses of their housing, food and other components.

During her speech, the communications manager of MOVE Texas, Tori Falcon, said that she hopes to continue a fight to protect the earth and environment.

"Young people are the moment and the movement," Falcon said. "They are uniquely positioned to lead all frontiers for a better world."

Each speaker stood at the podium intending to make their causes known. Some speakers also brought their art to the podium with slam poetry and drag performances.

"The speeches were really awesome," Sanchez said. "I think we had a good variety of speakers that kind of talked about these different topics that were definitely relevant to the youth that was there at advocacy day."

Students were then led in groups to speak to representatives and to learn how to "drop cards" on house bills using kiosks stationed around the Capitol.

"Dropping a card is essentially when a bill has its hearing in the Senate or the House, an individual constituent can say they are for it or against it without having to testify in front of people," Sanchez said. "You can go to the Capitol and drop a card which just digitally states your opinion."

Beck said that the event had been in the planning stages for about a year before turning into a reality.

"We've come to the Capitol before. We've done lobby days and our advocacy team has been fighting against these laws since springtime has come around," Beck said. "But this huge day of action just takes a lot of planning takes a lot of collaboration with other organizations."

According to Sanchez, the event went according to plan and had a good turnout.

"Seeing other people access their state government and their representatives for the first time in their lives because a lot of them came from so far away showed me that I think that this advocacy had a very big impact on them," Sanchez said.

Beck said that she hopes the students learned that they belong in their legislation.

"I feel like we think of the Capitol and even voting is like this big and scary thing," Beck said. "It's only that way because people try to make it big and scary so that young people don't get out and vote. They're trying to put up barriers to keep us out. I think when we break those barriers ourselves and say, 'hey, no I belong here' is when students feel empowered."

"A student’s financial aid is first applied to their registration bill with the university. Any financial aid and scholarship funds in excess of that bill can be used to help cover their other education-related expenses," Murr told the Star in a written interview.

Tru Brown, a criminal justice freshman, said she has high expectations for BookSmart and hopes this platform will ease some financial stress in her life and help her have a more smooth-sailing experience buying textbooks.

"I’m expecting more accessible prices and to get the correct textbooks for the correct classes at a reasonable time," Brown said. "If my professor posts the syllabus with the required textbook, I expect to see that reflected in my Canvas through BookSmart within the next few days."

Algoe said BookSmart would hopefully be a long-term solution to the problem of overpriced textbooks by continuing to assess the costs of these materials every year and changing them accordingly.

"When we think long-term, faculty adoption of quality teaching materials is still the solution here," Algoe said. "Our library and many of our academic affairs leaders are working with faculty every day to assist them in the whole process of allocating good and affordable teaching materials."

Hernandez said she believes the platform will provide students with the best deals for books without having them look for deals on their own and end up buying the wrong version or getting scammed.

"Saving that time, energy, stress and also demystifying a 'hidden curriculum' for first-year students, those things that you don’t know how to navigate because you didn’t have to worry about navigating them before now, is our one true goal with all of this," Hernandez said.

The Main Point is an opinion written collectively by The University Star's Editorial Board. Opinions expressed are not necessarily those of our entire publication.

From Front Social Media

According to Pew Research Center, 23% of Americans use Twitter, and roughly 69% say they get their news from the site. Several news organizations, such as The New York Times, have also stated that they won't be subscribing to Twitter Blue, meaning that those who find their news on Twitter will begin to see fewer of those tweets due to the “For You” restrictions.

Often, student media outlets can be viewed as having less broad coverage than other publications not connected to a college campus. However, The Star's coverage reaches beyond the scope of the Texas State campus, a community of over 50,000 people.

As a student news source, The Star's stories are about Texas State and its students. Still, we also cover local elections, city council and other stories affecting the San Marcos community. The University Star is the only news outlet in the area that caters to both communities.

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We believe that the over 17,000 followers we’ve accumulated on Twitter through our community and campus-centered journalism reflect our trustworthiness as a news source to those communities we serve.

We also believe our Twitter following speaks more toward our reliability as a news organization than a monthly fee of $8. The blue checkmark now symbolizes, instead of years of credible journalism, a willingness to spend $8.

According to the Twitter Help Center, Twitter Blue is a service meant to “elevate quality conversations” on the platform. Some of the features of a subscription include editing tweets after they’re posted, using NFT profile photos and publishing tweets that are longer than 280 characters.

Though not everyone who decides to pay for Twitter Blue is guaranteed a checkmark, allowing anyone to have the opportunity chips away at the credibility the platform once held. Despite what Twitter advertises, quality conversations are in danger. The app has become a pay-to-play platform.

Users will likely begin to see the recognizable blue checkmark on every corner of the platform. Every user who pays for the subscription will be placed under review to receive the check, but the only criteria are that the account must be active, older than 30 days and “non-deceptive.” The former verification, known as the legacy verification program, had to be met by a higher standard of criteria. Accounts had to be authentic, notable, active and fit into a category or subcategory. As a news organization, The University Star fits all these criteria.

Troll accounts can abuse the Twitter Blue subscription by creating accounts impersonating prominent figures. Some troll accounts, such as one for George W. Bush, have already appeared. The blue checkmark is still associated with reliability, which means these fake accounts can get away with more than usual.

Twitter stated that any account not clearly labeled as a parody would be permanently suspended without warning. This policy has the potential to bring more problems to the platform. There is a chance that Twitter won’t be able to catch every account that needs to be suspended or credible accounts may be wrongfully suspended.

High-quality information such as that which comes from credible news sources will be drowned out by content that someone has paid to display on users' Twitter Home page.

Our audience ought to be able to see our tweets without The Star’s payment for Twitter Blue. As a student media outlet with a large audience, keeping our communities informed is at the forefront of our mission. Diminishing our line of communication with them on Twitter is the start of censorship.