Campaigning to lower textbook prices was on the platform of every Student Government presidential candidate last year, and now, two bills introduced in the North Carolina legislature deal with attempts to lower the prices for students.

House Bill 1635, which has passed the first obstacle of making it into the budget, changes the tax-free weekend from the first weekend in August to the third to be closer to the fall term and increases the limit on textbooks from $100 to $300.

Senate Bill 1392 eliminates the sales tax on textbooks for students in postsecondary institutions.

Student Government officials said they are pushing for both bills in hopes of getting at least a partial tax cut in textbook sales.

“We pushed for both bills because … you never know what’s going to happen in the state legislature,” Bobby Mills, student body president, said.

Adam Compton, last year’s student body treasurer who took a leading role in campaigning to lower prices, said he thinks the bills are a step in the right direction.

“It’s great to see that we have committments from the legislature working on both sides of the House and the Senate to see changes,” he said.

According to Compton, a junior in agricultural business management and a senator, the UNC Association for Student Governments has done more work advocating the House bill, and though there is nothing wrong with versions of both the bills passing, he said he feels students should be advocating the Senate bill the hardest.

“It’s complete elimination of the sales tax on textbooks,” he said. “It’s not a cap; it’s not a weekend. It’s exactly what we wanted.”

Mills, a junior in political science and economics, said he doesn’t see the current version of the Senate bill passing because of the financial impact it would cause on the state.

“It doesn’t just affect UNC system schools, it affects all private and community colleges,” he said.

About 20 percent of the money students pay for public institutions goes towards textbooks, Mills said, and about 50 percent of what students who go to community colleges pay goes towards textbooks.

Mills said the House bill may not pass without changes as well, due to the fact that it changes a national tax-free weekend to a different date in North Carolina.

“The House bill is not going to get anywhere because big merchants don’t want to change the date,” Mills said.

He said people will end up crossing state borders to take advantage of two tax-free weekends, which will make these merchants lose money.

Greg Doucette, Student Senate president and senior in computer science, also participated in advocating lower textbook prices.

“I’m fairly optimistic that they’ll both pass initially,” he said. “The issue is what the final budget will look like.”

Doucette said the legislators are trying to keep a low profile about the Senate bill in hopes of it passing without too much commotion.

Mills said the UNC Board of Governors is also doing work to help lower textbook prices by giving all 16 UNC schools two options they have to implement by 2009 — either adopting a book rental program or guaranteed buyback for all entry level course books.

According to Mills, NCSU is opting for the second program, and at the beginning of the fall semester, Richard Hayes, director of the bookstore, will begin implementing the placement of stickers on four to 12 textbook titles that the store will have to buy back for 50 percent of the price at the end of the semester, which he and Mills have been working on getting in place.

Compton said if either of the bills pass, it still should not be the end of students’ advocacy work for lowering textbook prices.

“[We should be] encouraging the use of textbooks for more than one year in the classroom, encouraging professors to use the low cost option of textbooks, encouraging different classes to use the same textbook, advocating legislation that will put more strain on the textbook publishing industry, not publishing a new edition every year, finding the cheapest way possible instead of printing the color version,” he said.

Another issue officials should look at, according to Compton, is how much faculty make off of their own textbooks and if it is ethical for a faculty member to require students to buy a book that the faculty member is making money off of.

“In some cases, it’s very little money,” he said. “Sometimes, it’s a good amount of money.”