Student Council approved a new textbook affordability committee, which will be a collaborative effort between students and faculty, Wednesday evening.
Academic Affairs Chair Jonah Zinn said the committee would work for a switch to e-books on campus and to require professors to issue book lists, among other initiatives.
The committee was created by members of Academic Affairs and will be a Shared Governance Committee.
The committee’s next step is to get approved by Faculty Senate at its next meeting. Members of Academic Affairs are currently drafting a petition with faculty signatures to show support when they ask for approval.
Graduate School Rep. Colin Ingram, while agreeing with the overall sentiment that textbook prices are indeed too high, told the council to tread lightly when it comes to discussing textbook prices with faculty.
“A lot of professors do not get very high salaries and make revenue off the books they sell. It’s important for us to work closely with faculty,” Ingram said.
The council unanimously passed the creation of the committee without much debate, and it passed the creation of an intern position for the Student Services Finance Committee as well.
The position will be filled as soon as a student wants it, possibly as soon as next fall. The intern would not have voting rights on the committee and would not serve on the committee, but would rather provide SSFC with feedback from General Student Services Fund groups.
Former SSFC Chair Eand Rep. Carl Fergus said it would be essential for the intern to disconnect with the process of allocating fees and to be one avenue for groups to go through if they had an issue with SSFC.
While the committee and intern were passed at this meeting, council opted to postpone the stipend recommendations decision, which would decide how stipends in Associated Students of Madison would be allocated in the coming years, to the April 7 meeting.
SSFC Secretary Matt Manes led the subcommittee which created a formula to decide stipends based on the cost of tuition to avoid any arbitrary decisions, which could be made on stipends by future ASM sessions.
The stipends would be decided based on the percentage of tuition the stipend would cover, and Ingram said it would be necessary to make sure the actual percentages could not be changed.
Manes said students would not care about the final stipend decision as long as it did not affect what the council would be able to do on their behalf.
The recommendations before council last night did not provide those safeguards, and Manes agreed with the council to postpone.
Another agenda item up for discussion next meeting is the Bylaws Committee, introduced by Chair Tyler Junger, which would look over any ambiguous language in the ASM bylaws and any possible contradictions.
“In the last 16 years we have made constant changes, and no one sits down to see if they are contradicting themselves, so we have consistency and clear language and spend less time debating on whether or not what they are doing is legal,” Junger said.
