Students passing by the Duck Pond on Wednesday might have noticed uneven tombstones rising above the lush grass in the sunny afternoon.
Students gathered to pay their last respects to textbooks that the Bookstore will not buy back because they are not the most recent edition.
UNM Public Interest Research Group created a "Textbook Graveyard" to highlight the rising costs of college textbooks caused by major publishing companies dominating the market.
"A lot of the times, publishers create a new edition right after they create the first edition, so basically we're talking about dead textbooks," said Taria Kenny, campus organizer for UNMPIRG. "The information's not really updated; it's just revised and put back out there for people to spend their money on."
In 2004, PIRG students at a university in Oregon released a report titled "Ripoff 101," which documented the high price of college textbooks. Since then, college PIRG organizations have surveyed students and faculty to better understand problems with textbook prices.
"Publishers work to undermine the used book market, saddle textbooks with unnecessary bells and whistles, indiscriminately jack up prices with little justification, and withhold pricing
Get content from The Daily Lobo delivered to your inbox
information from college professors," said Erica Krause, spokeswoman for UNMPIRG.
Krause said she and other PIRG volunteers are trying to get UNM faculty members to find an alternative to expensive textbooks.
"At UNM, we're trying to get professors to sign an open-source textbook commitment and try and get them to switch their textbooks over to something more affordable and easier to obtain," she said.
Krause said open-source textbooks are preferable because they are often published online, sidestepping major publishing companies.
"They're more available to this generation, and it doesn't allow textbook publishers to have a monopoly over the entire market, like (they do) right now," she said.
At a meeting with faculty today and Monday, UNMPIRG will present "What I Sacrificed for My Textbook," a book of entries from UNM students in which they share what they would have spent their money on if they hadn't had to pay so much for textbooks.
Sophomore Lindsay Laine said she spent between $750 and $800 for textbooks this semester, and she is taking 18 credit hours.
Laine said she would rather spend textbook money on things like food and rent.
"Right now, with the state the economy is in, everyone is having a hard time," she said. "I think that the Bookstore, and textbooks in general, create a monopoly. Students have to buy them, and the prices that they're charging are ridiculous. I just think it's a whole bureaucratic, corrupt system."
Jeremy Sment, a junior majoring in mechanical engineering, said he's been creative in avoiding spending too much on textbooks.
"I avoided a $200 physics textbook . a chemistry book . and there's just a lot of things I've had to do," he said. "Like, instead of reading a new publication of the chemistry book, I just got some other brand. I just used the index and looked up the subjects. It's all the same stuff."
Marisa Clark, a lecturer in the English Department, said she sympathizes with students who have to spend hundreds of dollars on books every semester.
"There are a few publications that run for like $20 to $25. They're hard to find, but they're out there," Clark said. "Sometimes, if I see a book that's 70 or 80 bucks, it's hard to tell a student they've got to buy that."
Clark said she prefers students to have textbooks with them in class and recommends the UNM Copy Center as an alternate resource.
"I do know that, as a teacher, I do like my students to have the hard copy with them in the classroom, so I think that's important and valuable," she said. "But then again, I'm wondering how many people are learning how to read and retain, really, off the Internet, and I'm just not part of that generation."
Meetings with faculty to discuss textbook prices
Today
SUB Cherry and Silver rooms
10:30 a.m.
SUB Jemez Room
6:00 p.m.
Monday
SUB Cherry and Silver rooms
10:30 a.m.
SUB Jemez Room
5:00 p.m.
