The Social Equality Club kicked off its “Access to Textbooks” campaign last Tuesday. The campaign is designed to help alleviate the pricey textbook problems students face and make them more accessible.

Textbooks are a vital item for students, but with most of a student’s money being spent on other essentials like tuition and student fees, textbook prices are becoming too expensive.

According to a study released by U.S. PIRG, students spend an average of $1200 on books and school supplies every year. The study also showed that students have become concerned that the cost of textbooks will impact their grades and how many classes they will take each semester.

In a Social Equality Club meeting, members discussed the start of the “Access to Textbooks” campaign to help those students who are worried that textbooks impact classes and grades.

The club announced that that there are two goals involving the cost of textbooks.

The first goal is to educate the students on campus about the reason why text books are unfairly priced.

Jennifer Ovalle, child development major and member of the club, said, “Within the textbook market there are only five publishers that control the market, three distributors that control the distribution of books on campus and only one campus bookstore available.”

Fernanda Gudino, nursing major and attendee of the meeting, thinks that what the club is trying to do is a good idea.

She went on to say that the type of structure is named the oligopolistic market structure, in which the market is dominated by a small number of companies that are able to increase product prices as much as they want.

“What the club is planning to do is really great since a lot of people complain about high book prices but many don’t know why books are so expensive. So getting the information out there is important,” Gudino said.

The second goal the club has is to renegotiate the contract with the Follet Corporation. The Follet Corporation, provides the educational products to the college.

The plan is to look into the contract Cerritos College has with Follet and get the bookstore to supply the library with more textbooks.

Carolina Morales, history major and member of the club said, “We want to have more books in the reserve area of the library because often times students can’t afford books or they can’t buy the books right away. They are often left behind in their school works. So by having reserves we offer accessibility.”

Professor Mike Huang believes the club’s campaign will become a very helpful resource for students.

“That’s great. It’ll help a lot of students but they shouldn’t just rely on library reserves. Students should still buy the book if they want to do well in class.”

For more information about textbook costs and The Social Equality Club’s initiative to address the concerns with the “Access to Textbooks” campaign, visit thesocialequalityclub.org.