If you’ve ever tried to sell back a book mid-semester at Skyline’s bookstore, you were probably unsuccessful. As it stands now, students only have a brief window of four days at the end of the semester (December 17 -21) to sell back their books, despite the fact the bookstore is fully capable of activating buybacks at any time. You actually could have sold that book back mid-semester through an underpublicized and little known appeals process.
We at The Skyline View believe a more ideal policy for selling back textbooks would be to give the students the option to sell back books whenever they choose. The current policy does not take into account students who drop mid-semester and according to the Skyline website that was 17% of the enrollment in the 2006/07 school year.
It is unreasonable to ask these students to sit on a book they no longer use when they could make money by selling it back. This lay off gives ample time for books to get lost or students to simply forget about the current four days allotted for sellback, especially if they’re no longer enrolled in classes.
One undisputed fact is that selling back books mid-semester will not net students as much money as waiting until finals will, where you can earn up to 50% of the books original selling price. Because of this, the bookstore has taken it upon itself to deny us the opportunity to sell back books mid-semester – except for the appeals process no one seems to know about – believing most students rather wait until finals to sell their books.
We want this changed and believe it should be up to us to make the decision on when to sell back our own books. If the bookstore is capable of selling books back through appeals anyway, why not just adopt the year round buyback policy that many other local community colleges have. Schools like City College of San Francisco, College of Marin and Laney College in Oakland allow students to sell back books as they please, whether it’s at mid-semester for cheaper prices or as the semester ends when buyback prices rise.
The bookstore is correct when they say students would rather get more money for selling back they’re books, but that isn’t always an option and the current appeals process hasn’t been clearly conveyed to the student body. College students always need money. Whether it be $5 or $100, in the middle of the semester or the end of the semester, no college student is going to turn down the opportunity to fatten their pockets.