SBP candidates outline academic initiatives

Academic issues are often a central part of student body president candidates' agendas. Textbook prices, library hours and Q-drops are all concerns of the candidates.

One major issue all the student body president candidates plan to address if elected is the cost of textbooks. Education graduate student Jose Zelaya said he knows many students who have spent hundreds of dollars on textbooks, but barely needed the resource during the semester.

"It's very important to have a conversation with teachers and ask them that they only make students buy what they're going to be using," Zelaya said.

Senior finance major John Claybrook said one of his planned initiatives involves encouraging professors to start using open source textbooks.

"It's our hope that we can encourage professors to either write their own open source textbooks or find open source textbooks that are quality that students can learn from," Claybrook said. "If we could get professors to start using those, we can save students hundreds of dollars each semester."  

Open source textbooks don't have copy write protection, meaning students can access the information free of charge.

Sam Hodges said he hopes to implement a textbook adoption policy.

"The adoption policy requires a class to use the same textbook for six consecutive semesters," Hodges said. "The school's not having to restock the shelves, so it'll keep prices down."

Hodges said for upper-level classes, it's important to keep up-to-date information, so the adoption policy for those classes would be three consecutive semesters.

Claybrook said he learned of another major issue while living on campus: library hours.

"A lot of times there's resources on campus with the computers and books that we don't have at our houses, and the only place we can do our work is on campus," he said. "It's our hope to keep the Annex open until 11 o'clock on the weekend."

During the week, Evans Library closes at midnight, leaving remaining students to study elsewhere. Most students walk across to the Annex, which causes crowding, making it difficult for some students to concentrate on studying, he said.

"It's our hope that during the week, we can open the first three floors of Evans until 2 a.m. every night to alleviate some of the crowdedness from the Annex," Claybrook said. "It wouldn't require a ton of staff from Evans. We think that the cost is absolutely worth the benefit there."

Zelaya and Hodges plan to implement a mentor system within majors if elected. Seniors and juniors would be mentors to freshmen in the same major to give them an idea of what to expect in the coming years.

"I talked to a lot of students and when I asked them how many of them had changed their majors, almost everybody raised their hands," Zelaya said. "Many of them said it would have helped them if they knew somebody in their first major."

Zelaya said he has already started mentoring unofficially in the College of Education, but hopes to expand the idea across other colleges in the University.

"I plan to work on this whether I get a position or not," Zelaya said.

Hodges' plan for a peer-mentoring program is based on the Freshman Business Initiative within the Mays Business School.

"I would like to see the creation of more peer mentoring in every college so all students have that available if they want to utilize that resource to have a little more insight as to what the next couple of years will look like from an actual student's perspective," Hodges said.

Claybrook and Zelaya plan to address issues concerning freshman grade exclusions and Q-drops if elected.

"The way it works right now, Q-drop day is the 50th day of class. That's generally before students have taken enough tests to know whether or not they're going to pass that class," Claybrook said. "It's our hope to be able to push an agenda that will get that Q-drop date pushed back to the 60th day of class to give students time to decide whether they have a chance of passing that class or not."

Zelaya said that right now, a class that has been freshman grade excluded shows up as an F on a transcript, and while that F doesn't average into a student's GPR, it can negatively impact their ability to get accepted to graduate school.

Budget cuts were another major issue for candidates and students. Hodges said he wants to work with the state legislature to put an end to budget cuts.

"We want to take the offensive with the state legislature so they know we're serious about higher education and we're going to keep students at the forefront of their minds and their agendas, as well, so higher education isn't the first thing to get cut," Hodges said. "A&M is always on the rise with education and academic initiatives so I think we're in a good position and we're moving forward."