Miranda Coulthard / Winonan
Textbooks are an unavoidable cost within courses in college, but Winona State University’s Minnesota State University Student Association (MSUSA) gave students the opportunity to discuss issues of affordability with Sen. Jeremy Miller, R., on Monday, Jan. 25.
Elected in 2011, Miller represents Winona County and other counties, is the co-founder of the Purple Caucus and is a local business owner in Winona.
Aly Hagglund, a member of MSUSA, which is a student group that advocates for student’s rights, said this year, MSUSA will be advocating for textbook affordability.
The organization has a record of standing up for affordability. Last year, the group went to the capitol to advocate for a tuition freeze. Minnesota has since then announced a tuition plan for students to help with affordability.
MSUSA’s target goal this year is to have Winona State use open access textbooks. According to MSUSA and student senate member Amanda Boss, an open access, or open source, textbook is an online book published for anyone’s use free of cost. Boss said the books can even be a book that a professor has written. The open access books get eliminate the fees that can come with going through a publishing comapny.
“A lot of the times its professors who take different works of theirs that they’ve had over the years, and they piece them together into this open book that they put online that students can have,” Boss said. “But then sometimes there are very generous professors who just post a whole book online.”
One of the problems with MSUSA’s goal is getting professors on board with the proposal for open access textbooks, which was discussed in detail at the meeting.
According to Boss, in March MSUSA, along with a task force, seven other task forces across the state, and the Winona State Student Senate, will be bringing a proposal to the State Senate. This will do something to the effect of giving professors a small reward for using open access textbooks.
“We want to pass something through the State Senate and have Jeremy Miller present it as a bill on the floor so that it not necessarily requires professors to use open access textbooks but gives them something more of an incentive to use them,” Boss said.
Boss also said that other schools, like the
University of Minnesota: Twin Cities, have grants of “a couple thousand dollars,” that reward the professors who use open source textbooks.
“Right now we have a couple professors here at Winona State that get $200 each if they review an open source textbook,” Boss said.
For students, getting involved is relatively easy. According to Boss, MSUSA has an informational table periodically, which will have information slips where students can sign up to get alerts about what is going to be proposed at the House or Senate. Students will then receive “legislative alerts,” where they will be notified of progress in the House or Senate.
Students then have the opportunity to show their support for it via email sent to representatives, Boss said.