college textbooks should be affordable

        In my unit one policy class here at gce we have been focusing on legislature. We looked at the different branches of government and talked about declarations. We discussed how laws are made and all the people that are involved like the committee, filibuster, the senate, the house, and the president. We talked to Troy LaRaviere and Andy Davis. We also went to take a look at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial on Wacker drive. During Troy LaRaviere's visit he talked about bill he is trying to get passed. This is the house bill 5107 which would amend the Illinois School Code and the Illinois Educational Labor Relations Act to make principals, who are supervisors, eligible for collective bargaining exclusively in Chicago. He talked about how cps is getting more money while having less students and how they rather spend money to expand a mostly white populated school. Along with that when he was trying to get support for this bill he sent out emails to 30 principals and only got one email back, he decided to call instead and then got four responses. This project was originally a letter to a legislator but taking what we heard from Troy we decided it was best to leave a voicemail instead. 

I decided to leave a voicemail for Richard Durbin who is the senator for Illinois and a sponsor for senate bill 3818. This is a bill to expand the use of open textbooks in order to achieve savings for students and improve textbook price information. I am supporting this bill because I believe college textbooks should be more affordable, the high costs are one of the main reasons why college students drop out or don't go to college in the first place. Below is my voicemail script and the audio from the voicemail. 

Voicemail Script

Hello, I am a junior from Global Citizenship Experience Lab School and I called in regards to bill SB 3818 which states that it is a bill to expand the use of open textbooks in order to achieve savings for students and improve textbook price information. I wanted to reach out and thank you and say that I fully support the Affordable College Textbook Act. As somebody who is looking into college right after highschool and seeing how expensive tuition is itself on top of all the other fees I appreciate the bill trying to make textbooks more affordable especially since that is one of the essential things that is asked for during the four years. According to CBS news “Considering that the average cost of college textbooks over the past ten years rose four times faster than the rate of inflation, and 186% in an eight-year span” this is one of the main reasons why students either drop out or don’t have all the resources they need, because they can't afford it. Most of the time textbooks that you are asked to buy aren’t even used as much as you think you would use them. Personally, most of my family wasn’t able to go to college because of the pricing and the fact that they couldn’t afford it. My parents are doing everything they can to be able to send me to college because they didn’t get that opportunity and I know if textbooks were more affordable that would be a huge help. My parents have always told me that they are going to live through me which I always thought was silly but I understand now that they want to see me become somebody and have everything they didn’t. I’m sure there are people that say that this could be hard for publishers that make these college textbooks because they wrote them so why shouldn’t they be able to set their own price based on how much they believe the book is worth. That may be true but if textbooks were more affordable more people would buy them and most likely make more money than they would possibly lose if they were expensive. These publishers are also losing money because according to the Washington post, “students are getting creative by making scanned copies of textbooks and scouring the internet for free PDF’s”. Although I'm only a junior in high school and I might not have the biggest impact on this bill, I still believe that this bill is worth fighting for. I am looking forward to seeing this bill passed through the committee and helping families like mine. I am pleased to see that somebody is doing something about these high costs and I'm sure many more people are too. Hopefully we will see more students committing to college and not worrying about whether they can afford it or not. I Finally want to thank you for taking the time to listen. I hope you get the necessary support to pass this bill. As a future college student, thank you. 

-EM 

 

Voicemail Audio

Overall, I enjoyed this project. I enjoyed finding this bill, I didn't know this was a bill that was trying to get passed until I did some research about it. I learned a lot of valuable information during this unit. I enjoyed talking to Troy and Andy and took everything they told me and put it into this action project. 

Works Cited

Editor, Samuel Schell-Olsen | Opinion, and Flickr | John Liu. “Opinion: The Biggest Drag in College Is the Textbooks.” The News Record, 26 Feb. 2020, https://www.newsrecord.org/opinion/opinion-the-biggest-drag-in-college-is-the-textbooks/article_6f38b23a-5831-11ea-ac1d-375d45712e5b.html. 

Valle, Gaby Del. “The High Cost of College Textbooks, Explained.” Vox, Vox, 6 Mar. 2019, https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2019/3/6/18252322/college-textbooks-cost-expensive-pearson-cengage-mcgraw-hill. 

Lumpkin, Lauren. “Textbooks Are Pricey. so Students Are Getting Creative.” The Washington Post, WP Company, 17 Jan. 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/textbooks-keep-getting-pricier-so-students-are-getting-creative/2020/01/17/4e1306b8-30b9-11ea-91fd-82d4e04a3fac_story.html. 

 

Eileen Medina · Voicemail- college textbooks should be affordable