boycott
Textbook Boycott: Let's do this thing
Happy new year! Let's make the Man squirm!
Here's the plan:
- It was suggested that it would be easier to boycott all new editions instead of just one, and would be easier to get people to jump on the bandwagon. Therefore, instead of targeting one publisher, we're going to target them all.
- We'll start as soon as people's semesters start. Some schools are doing their interim/J-term right now, which we're unfortunately too late for, but second semester is still just over the horizon for many peoples. Therefore, we still have time to hunt down used textbooks.
- We need a basic form letter that we can send to professors expressing our intent. I'm willing to write one, but it'd be nice to have a few of them to work with. Anyone willing to write a few paragraphs?
I'm going to set up a project page here for us to coordinate information. Let's go make some old people with printing presses nervous!
Textbook Boycott: Who published my textbook?
Some of you might be willing to participate, but leery of spending hours researching how much your books cost. Here's an easy way to cut that time to seconds. Seconds!
- Think back to standing in the bookstore, when you picked up that certain textbook and exclaimed "Holy crap! They want a bajillion dollars for this thing???"
Textbook Boycott: The Saga Continues
Alright, the poll goes live tomorrow morning. If you don't have your original textbook reciepts, you can get a ballpark idea of what a book costs new by going to Amazon or Half.com and plugging in either the title or the ISBN number.
Textbook Boycott Roundup
Ok, so here's a roundup of the discussion so far:
People seem game to do this so long as it doesn't jeopardize their academic standing (i.e., they fail the course for not having the textbook). It has been suggested that professors need to be invited to be a part of this, and ways of distributing course materials amongst students need to be devised.
Here's my idea for figuring out which publisher to go after:
- Between now and Christmas, take a look at who published your first semester textbooks, especially the new editions.
- Figure out what each book cost you, and make a note somewhere
- Come back here starting next Monday, where I will have a poll up for you to mark which publishers cost you the most money. There'll also be a discussion thread so that we can figure out if a particular publisher partakes in price gouging or other unfriendly practices.
- Whoever has the most votes and/or gripes by Christmas is the target of our boycott.
Does this make sense to everyone? Is there anything painfully obvious that I'm missing?
American Eagle Back-to-School Boycott
American Eagle has the money, power and influence to ensure the workers at its contractor’s warehouse are treated fairly and justly. Sure, they can sit back and take the easy road. AE uses the excuse: we don’t own the warehouse anymore…our hands are tied...we can’t do anything about it. That’s BS.