OUR VIEWS Consensus Opinion

Tax free texts

The Student Lobby Board has achieved an important first milestone by getting House Bill 1397 to the state legislature. If passed, the elimination of sales tax on textbooks could potentially save students $60 to $70 over the course of a year. $60 or $70 might not be a big reduction when looking at the total cost of these textbooks, however, this bill is definitely a step in the right direction and hopefully will be the first step that will lead to future textbook cost reductions.

The problem of rising textbook costs has become a hotly debated issue. Over the past 20 years, the cost of textbooks has increased over 180 percent—twice the rate of inflation. Students and teachers have come up with many creative ways of cutting costs, from buying textbooks online to setting up textbook trading services.

Legislation is another potential route to explore and the lobby board needs the help of student support to see this bill successfully passed. Tech students need to put away our infamous realism to put their support behind the bill; this type of legislation has passed in four states, and it is important to stand up for our interests. College students can gain grounds in proving our importance as constituents by increasing our political voice. Simply sending a message to our state representatives will aid the bill’s prospects.

Eliminating taxes on textbooks won’t solve the textbook problems, but it is a move in the right direction.

Teaching TAs

CETL’s graduate training program is a welcome option at a school where students often complain about the quality of their TAs, especially graduate TAs. While a TA training course won’t be able to aid graduate students in crucial areas like language skills and pronouciation, it is good that TAs will have the option of taking a course to improve their ability to deal with students and relay information.

However, this course is not likely to help all TAs and could turn potentially excellent students, who do not have the time to take an additional class on top of existing commitments; furthermore, not all TAs need the training. As such, the class should not be mandatory. Rather, taking the class should be something TAs can take voluntarily to gain confidence or improve skills. It could also be used to help struggling TAs that get poor student feedback make changes to their teaching style.

While it isn’t a magic bullet to solve all of students’ TA woes, it’s good to see the administration looking at the problem.

Consensus editorials reflect the majority opinion of the Editorial Board of the Technique, but not necessarily the opinions of individual editors.