The Wednesday meeting for the Student Government Association on the second floor of the MD Anderson Library included guest speaker Felix Robinson, the general manager at the UC Barnes & Noble Bookseller, who started the meeting by taking questions to explain how “the textbook situation works.”
“We want students to know that our bookstore at UH is offering all the options available to them,” Robinson said, in reference to print, rental and electronic textbooks.
Robinson focused most on what he called the process of acquiring textbooks, submitting book requests to the campus faculty and re-acquiring books at the end of the semester.
“How did that textbook get on the shelf? Books are picked by the faculty members,” Robinson said. “It’s our responsibility to put that book on the shelf. They determine what that content is. Every February through March we submit summer/fall book requests to the campus. We do it twice a year,
September/October near the end of the month. Why? You’ll be looking to sell those books back.”
Robinson mentioned that buying the books directly from students was more cost effective than buying them from a third party which a student might be inclined to sell to.
“We wan’t to be able to buy those books back before students leave. We will pay 50% of the cost of that book if the book will be used next semester,” Robinson said. “If a book is custom to UH we may not rent it, because if we rent it and can’t sell it, we’re stuck with it. If that book has a national value, we’re more likely to carry it.”
Later in the meeting, Ilya Slavinski appeared at the podium to ask the SGA to support the Texas Public Interest Research Group, consumer group interested in increasing registered voters in students. TexPIRG has no official student organization on campus as of yet.
The SGA then introduced a draft resolution labeled “SGA49004 A Resolution in support of Texas Public Interest Research Group.” but made no move to vote.
The SGA appointed several candidates for over a dozen open positions during the meeting as well.
- Tanzeem Chowdhury to Chair of Student Life
- Angela Kao to Attorney General
- Gregory Buchanan to Associate Justice
- Sarim Qureshi to the Activities Funding Board
- Terry Chung to Food Services Advisory Committee
- Adriene Preston to International Students Advisory Council
- Eduardo Reyes to Student Housing & Residential Life Advisory Committee/Student Traffic Court
- Jeff Syptak to Student Publications Committee/Transportation & Parking Advisory Committee
- Arsalan Razakazi to Student Traffic Court
- Andrea Trevino to Student Fees Advisory Committee/Transportation & Parking Advisory Committee
- Roel Benavides to Student Traffic Court/Undergraduate Review Committee
No two candidates ran for the same position, but some applied for more than one, like accounting freshman Sarim Qureshi, who was appointed to Activities Funding Board, but not the Sustainability Task Force.
According to SGA speaker of the Senate Stephen Cronin, the appointments for Daisy Trevino and Qurat Hassan were tabled until next meeting, set for 7:30 p.m. on Sept. 19 in the Rockwell Pavilion.
Good summary of the meeting! =]