By Katie Schimmelpfennig
Trevecca students will be required to rent their textbooks from the private company that manages the bookstore—but not until fall of 2013.
Trevecca officials plan to implement “Books Fly Free” but decided to delay the start for another year to give them time to work out details and concerns raised by some students.
They are delaying the program to allow more time to review credit hours that normally never have textbooks, such as student teaching, and to explore textbook alternatives, such as digital sources that would be cheaper, David Caldwell, executive vice president for finance and administration, wrote in an email to all students and faculty.
Beginning in fall 2013, the Tree of Life Bookstores Inc. program, “Books Fly Free” will work a textbook fee into tuition. Books are rentals and will be delivered to students’ on-campus dorms and apartments. Students will receive every book that professors request for $20 per credit hour. Students will then return their books to the bookstore at the end of the semester or buy them to keep.
By delaying the program one year Caldwell hopes to modify the plan by excluding some credit hours and exhausting reasonable alternatives to textbooks, he wrote.
Student government association voted in favor of the proposal, “Books Fly Free” for a second time with a strong recommendation for the President’s Cabinet to see if freshmen could also opt out of the program, and to send an official statement out to students with SGA’s reason behind the vote.
SGA sent an official statement to students via Facebook as a “note” on their wall. Click here to view their letter.
Click here to read Caldwell’s letter.
