OSPIRG

Students spend an average of $900 a year on textbooks, which is 20% of tuition at an average university and half of tuition at a community college! And the prices keep going up.

We think that textbooks should be reasonably priced, students should be able to easily sell their books and used books should be easy to find.

Around the country, students and professors are fighting back. They're refusing to buy books from publishers unless they're cheaper, unbundled and on the market for longer. They're ordering cheaper books from British websites. They're trading books with each other at online book swaps like CampusBookswap.org. And publishers are feeling the heat: they're putting out lower priced books and negotiating deals with faculty who push.

There is plenty of food worldwide to feed the existing human population. In fact, the world produces 10% more food today than is needed to feed everyone. Yet millions of people throughout the world and the United States currently exist without adequate food and shelter. The U.S. is one of the richest, most advanced nations in the world and could easily end hunger and homelessness if we prioritized it as a society. Experts estimate that if we fully funded federal assistance programs, we could end domestic hunger in five years. The problems of hunger and homelessness worsen each year as critical societal decisions are made based on special interests instead of the public's interest.

Global warming is all over the news right now, but almost no one is talking about solutions — even though we have everything we need right now to solve the problem. We already have cars that can get over 100 miles per gallon. We already have the technology to get most of our energy from wind and solar power. All we need now is the leadership to make it happen.

That’s where students come in. This is our problem, and it’s up to us to solve it, starting right here on campus, right now. Last year, OSPIRG students at COCC took initiative and got a measure on the student ballot to make sure that 100 percent of our energy comes from clean and renewable sources. Students voted overwhelmingly for the measure, and now we pay 25 cents per credit hour to buy wind power from Blue Sky Renewable Energy!

Last year was a great victory, but we're not stopping there. That’s why we’ve joined the Campus Climate Challenge, along with over 300 other universities and high schools across the U.S. and Canada. We’re working to transform the way our dorms and classrooms use energy, and educate ourselves and our fellow students about real solutions to global warming. It’s going to take hard work, but we are committed to making it happen. By 2008, over 1,000 universities will have joined us in taking the Challenge.