Text-deduction?

The IU Student Association is working toward putting an end to textbook taxation in Indiana, calling the taxes "a crime against students" and a barrier preventing poorer students from accessing higher education. The organization reports that the objective has seen overwhelming support, and has made it a main goal for the upcoming school year.\nIUSA should be commended for fighting for something that will be of use to students in the near future and beyond. After all, for students, any money saved is good money -- whether via a scholarship paying half-tuition or $2.50 saved on a paperback at the bookstore.\nHowever, history is not on IUSA's side. Since 1999, numerous attempts have been made to remove the sales tax. Equally as numerous have been the Indiana state legislature's denial of those attempts. In 2001, when over 13,000 people signed a petition in support of tax-exempted textbooks the bill did not even receive a hearing. That same year, the state legislature received over 1,000 letters from those people in support of tax-exemption on textbooks. Still, the state legislature turned a deaf ear. So far, the state's stance toward student protest has worked marvelously: Ignore them and they'll go away. And if they don't go away, ignore them some more. We congratulate IUSA on renewing the battle, though it may once again be rendered moot.\nAlso, it appears that IUSA's good intentions lack focus on the larger problem. Students' difficulty with paying for textbooks is not due to taxes alone -- or, even, primarily. A 2005 report by the Government Accountability Office found that textbook prices "have risen at twice the rate of inflation over the past 20 years" -- mainly due to the cost of unnecessary add-ons, such as CD-ROMs and course Web sites (Chronicle of Higher Education, Sept. 2, 2005). This, of course, is in addition to the printing of superficially-new editions of the same book, rock-bottom buy-back rates for used books and price hikes by the bookstores themselves. Thus, unless IUSA has some magical hypnosis spell to convince the producers and sellers of books to stop gouging students, we will still be hindered by their cost -- taxes or no taxes. \nIUSA deserves credit for doing just what the student organization is meant to do: it represents the needs and desires of the students, and it is indeed pressing our interest on this issue (and, besides, saved money means a pizza instead of ramen noodles). This effort to remove taxes is encouraging to the students that elected our IUSA representatives -- how often does the organization seem like nothing more than a tool to polish its members' resumés? However, when it boils down to the bottom, all of us students will most likely still be paying ridiculously overpriced amounts for our textbooks. IUSA is taking a bold stance -- but so did King Canute, and those waves look pretty big ...