In a combined effort with Student Government officials, University bookstore employees have labeled certain books with a guaranteed buyback sticker for 50 percent of the original price.

“The General Administration [has] been working on lowering the cost of textbooks to students,” Richard Hayes, director of the University bookstore, said.

According to Hayes, the Board of Governors determined that every university in the UNC System needed to implement a book rental program, like that of Appalachian State University, or a guaranteed buyback book program by Jan. 2008.

Hayes said N.C. State opted to go with the guaranteed buyback and decided to test it out on a few select titles for the fall.

“One of the biggest complaints we hear from students is why we change editions so frequently,” he said.

The books, Hayes said, would be guaranteed buybacks for an average of four semesters.

“New or used, we’re going to pay 50 percent of the new book’s price at buyback,” he said.

Bobby Mills, student body president, said SG has been working on several initiatives to help students find more affordable textbook options.

“Because we are a large research institution, a guaranteed buyback system is more viable than a rental program,” he said.

Registration and Records sent out an e-mail to all students about taking advantage of tax-free weekend at the push of Student Government, Mills said, and the amount of students who took advantage of the weekend showed a 400-percent increase, and a 20-percent increase in overall sales.

Su Wang, a freshman in psychology, thought the guaranteed buyback system is a good one to implement, especially with the guarantee that students will receive 50 percent or the new book’s price back.

“It’ll make students want to buy new books,” she said.

Wang said if the buyback system was in place for all books though, it would be more beneficial and save students a lot of money.

Mills said the goal is to work on that for all textbooks.

According to Hayes, the guaranteed buyback might cost the bookstore some money because if 1,000 students buy books for a class one semester and only 500 take it the second semester, the bookstore still has to buy back all 1,000 copies.