Like many professors who have written a book in their field of study, IU professor Marjorie Hershey requires students to purchase the book she wrote. However, instead of collecting the revenue from these books, Hershey donates her earnings to a non-profit organization of her student’s choice.
“For other people who use the book because the instructors require it, that’s one thing, but if I’m requiring my students to buy something and then I get some money in return for it, I don’t think it would be appropriate for me to keep those funds,” Hershey said.
Senior Derek Durnavich, a student in Hershey’s class, said it doesn’t bother him to support his instructors because of the time and effort they put forth to write books, but he said he is sometimes more skeptical about the book’s content.
“Sometimes I feel that they are a little bit biased when you have books that they wrote and that the information is going to be skewed to their liking,” Durnavich said.
When Hershey was asked to take over authorship of a book on political parties almost 20 years ago, she focused on creating a book that contained all the ideas about political parties that she thought were the most important and most interesting for students.
Hershey agreed to write the book for the same reason she teaches, which she said is to organize her thoughts and clearly express them to others.
The most recent version of Hershey’s book, “Party Politics in America,” is available at the IU Bookstore for about $40 to $100, depending on whether it is new, used, bought or rented.
Hershey said she doesn’t think there’s another book available that expresses the ideas she thinks are the most important. If there were, Hershey wouldn’t have written a book; rather, she would have assigned the book that expresses those ideas she said.
“Given that that’s what I think is the most appropriate for my teaching and parties, it seems odd that I would do anything other than use that book,” Hershey said.
Durnavich said he thinks it’s great she donates the money to nonprofit organizations and it eliminates the skepticism that accompanies buying a book written by the instructor.
“I think it shows that she isn’t just doing it for the money and that she really does care,” Durnavich said.
Although Hershey allows each student to choose what organization their money goes to, most semesters the students don’t request a specific organization. The default organization for Hershey is the Hoosier Hills Food Bank.
Hershey is a volunteer with the nonprofit organization, which provides more than 3 million pounds of food to individuals with low incomes every year according to HHFB website.
Although Hershey said she knows donating her book’s earnings to a charity or non-profit organization is not going to make the organization rich, she said it would make her uncomfortable receiving money for the books because many students struggle to afford textbooks.
With the price of her textbook being much higher than she would like for it to be because of publication regulations, Hershey said she can at least feel more comfortable knowing the money is going to help others who need it more than she does.
“If we can’t depend on government programs, then we have to depend on each other for better or for worse,” Hershey said.
