Editor's Note: The IU Student \nAssociation Elections are looming. Next week students will weigh in on who they think will do the best job. In the meantime, the five tickets -- College, Connect, Kirkwood, Vote for Pedro and What About Bobby? -- discuss a different issue each day with the Indiana Daily Student.
BOOKS\nA calculus book at $72, two political science texts totaling $126, a course load for Spanish costing $250 and $218 for a business class. Twelve credits, four classes, $666 in books. For those students who demand an explanation for the expensive cost of required books each semester, this year's IU Student Association candidates plan to work on finding one.\nAfter a year, the current IUSA administration's efforts have been slowed by technology issues and the difficult task of accessing the ISBN information for every course offered by the University. ISBNs are unique numbers that make the author, title and edition of a book easy to find. If students obtain these numbers, it might be possible to buy books from online sources for less.\nThe IU Bookstore currently posts the ISBNs for all courses this semester on its Web site, www.iubookstore.com.However to find the numbers students must navigate through too many steps, said current IUSA President Tyson Chastain. \nCrimson planned to make a Web site to which students would log on and immediately find access to their scheduled classes, required books and their ISBNs in one step. With the IU Bookstore's Web site now, students must look up classes one at a time.\nCollege Presidential Candidate Shane Merriweather said a lot of work still needs to be done to get to the point where students can depend on the Web site for classes. As former policy director for Crimson, Merriweather helped jump-start the process last year.\n"We still need to work on cross-linking the database so that the absolute best price can be found for students," he said. "Because in the end, that's what we want."\nAlong with the College ticket, Kirkwood, Vote for Pedro and What About Bobby? support the Crimson drive to create an ISBN database independent of the bookstore for students.\n"We're 100 percent behind that," said Eric Wolok, What about Bobby? presidential candidate.\nVote for Pedro's Alex Shortle said getting the ISBNs up for the entire year on an IUSA-sponsored Web site is his ticket's No. 1 goal in regard to book prices. The IU Bookstore already keeps the numbers posted all semester. Shortle said his party remains concerned about what economic effect providing students with an alternative to the IU Bookstore and T.I.S. will have on the two businesses, which both hold a near monopoly on book sales in Bloomington.\nBut IU Bookstore employee Paul Hazel said he thinks the IUSA effort to make an independent Web site is misguided.\n"It's because of us prices are low in town," Hazel said, adding that he feels the Bookstore does all it can to help students, including posting ISBNs online. "I don't know how it can be done any more quickly than we do."\nThe Kirkwood ticket's platform focuses less on the proposed Web site and more on having professors create online access to course packets through e-reserves or other databases. Presidential Candidate Bryan Strawbridge said this push will ultimately save students money.\n"Instead of buying (books) at T.I.S. or the (IU) Bookstore, students will have the opportunity to access the information in the amount they want at the time they want and will no longer have to pay the extreme prices just for copied material," Strawbridge said. \nThe Connect ticket stands alone in planning to abandon the ISBN Web site program. \n"We don't have to do that," said Charles Benson, the Connect vice president of operations candidate. "It's redundant."\nBecause the IU Bookstore already offers the ISBNs, the ticket's resources would be better used to pressure the University to require professors to submit book orders at least two weeks before classes begin, Benson said. Requiring professors to provide the numbers will help students find cheaper books in time for class.\nWhile Connect, Vote for Pedro and What About Bobby? structure their book stance solely around ISBNs, College and Kirkwood also emphasized a concern about the fairness of the IU Bookstore's bursar billing.\nOnly the IU Bookstore affords students the right to bill textbooks to the Bursar, despite T.I.S.' lobbying efforts. Some students -- particularly those on financial aid -- feel it is unfair that the University continues to force them to buy at the IU Bookstore even when T.I.S. might have cheaper prices. \n"I think either T.I.S. should be allowed to use the bursar account as well as the (IU Bookstore) or I don't believe the IU Bookstore should be allowed to use the bursar," said Ashley Crouse, Kirkwood's treasurer candidate. "I think it creates an unfair advantage."\nCollege Presidential Candidate Merriweather said he thinks allowing T.I.S. to share the bursar billing privilege will create competition for book prices and ultimately force them to decrease. He said his ticket would work with the outgoing Crimson administration to look into the legal issues that surround the process.\n"We want to make sure that in the end, students are taken care of," he said.\n-- Contact Staff Writer Colleen Corley at ccorley@indiana.edu.
