After the early adjournment of the Student Association Senate meeting almost two weeks ago, SA President Kevin Miller took action on a pending issue without recommendation from the senate.

Yesterday, the SA unveiled its new book exchange program and Web site for students. The Web site, which allows students to list their books online for a sale price, does not differ much from services such as eBay and books.com, according to Brooke Robinson, SA director of public affairs.

The program, which still was in debate among the senate, was approved by Miller in an effort for it to be used this semester.

“It didn’t actually go through approval because it got railroaded by the last meeting,” Robinson said. “This is something really important to the students that we wanted to get done this semester, and we thought it was really hurting the students to railroad them simply because certain senators were pissed off about previously passed legislation.”

Robinson said the new program will benefit students, especially in a time of budget concern.

“To my knowledge, an executive authorization was made to finance the publicity budget and it’s been uploaded onto the Web site,” Robinson said. “If people have a problem with that, fine, they have a problem with that. We just figured that physical therapy majors were pissed about spending $700 a semester on books. We took the initiative and made the steps, so we put it together and implemented it.”

Because the program never was approved by the senate, funds were allocated from Miller’s administration budget, the fund that also pays the salaries for the SA’s executives.

“The senate may not be too happy about it because it was before the senate in legislation, and it didn’t get passed because in the last meeting they decided to bring up laws that don’t apply to us, and people in their caution and ignorance of the law decided to bow to that, and so we didn’t have a meeting,” Robinson said.

Bound by the law

In a letter from NIU General Counsel George Shur to Sen. R.J. Gravel, he stated that the SA, in his opinion, is bound by the State Open Meetings Act. Shur said that the “act was designed to keep the public aware of the meetings and decisions of any public body.” Because the SA disperses public funds, it is bound by that rule.

“This got railroaded and it wasn’t officially able to go through senate. We just had to, unfortunately, go around the senate,” Robinson said. “If they’re going to be difficult in situations in doing the students’ business on important matters like this, then action is going to have to be taken.”

Robinson said that the idea of the program is not something that was just thrown on the table.

“Overall, this is a program that’s been in the works ever since [the senate] thought of getting elected,” Robinson said. “They have wanted this for a long time, and it’s finally coming together, and they’re so excited and it’s really going to do a lot of good things.”

Gravel said that after some investigating, he found that a program is not a new idea.

“Actually, it’s been tried before,” Gravel said. “It was tried over at the College of Law, but problems came up with it. Basically, they stopped it because of liability problems.”

Gravel said the major problem with the program is the lack of investigation to see if it would work.

“This is a good idea and it had a lot of merit, but the problem is timing and the process it went through to get it done,” Gravel said. “They went full steer into it and I don’t think they really thought of the problems that could come up.”

Sen. Jeff Meyer said the issue was referred to the SA’s Internal Affairs Committee, as well as the University Council, because of possible legal matters that could arise from the program.

“The Student Association, for all practical purposes, is a department of the university. The bookstore, for all practical purposes, is a department of the university,” Meyer said. “The book exchange, if it were to be implemented, and if it were to be successful, would then compete against another department within the same administrative agency.”

Meyer said that the possibility of the program succeeding might not be a good thing.

“Let’s assume there’s no liability conflict, there’s no legal concern, what happens if this takes off? Then we have a real competition with the bookstore and VCB. The bookstore, if there’s competition there, that takes away from the Student Center’s revenue,” Meyer said. “The problem is, how much was this really looked at? It was never touched by the University Council as far as I know as of yet. Bottom line, they brought it back to the senate. Well, of course, they don’t know how to run meetings.”

Meyer said if the University Bookstore sees a decline in book sales, it could have drastic effects on the revenue the store brings in for the HSC, forcing it to possibly cut staff or increase the price of services and books.

Robinson said that through the program, you can sell your books online and get more money from them and get books cheaper if you are buying them.

“There’s no buying your business book for $80 at the bookstore and then selling it back for $20 when they sell it back again at $80,” she said. “This is the price I am asking; it’s cheaper than the bookstore, you don’t have to pay $80, and I don’t have to settle for $20.”

Saving money

Robinson said the program comes just in time to save students their much-needed funds.

“This is going to be saving students money. This all comes at a time in the middle of a budget crisis where we don’t know what’s going to happen,” Robinson said. “We don’t know if tuition is going to go up; we don’t know if student fees are going to go up. I’m sure they will in some capacity or another, but right now, we’re looking to save students money.

“This is kind of like the beta program. We’re going to see how this part works and then we’re going to perfect it,” Robinson said. “This is just to get it out there and see if people are using it.”

While the launch of the SA’s new program may benefit students, it won’t help local bookstores.

“Frankly, we don’t care. We’re not in the business of looking out for everybody else’s business,” Robinson said. “We’re in the business of taking care of the students and addressing their needs.”

Meyer said that the program wasn’t given the proper debate and investigation it should have been, and that could result in a downfall in the end.

“You would think that they would know what the Open Meetings Act was, and that we’re to abide by it, but apparently, they don’t. Bottom line, it came back to us at that meeting and it wasn’t ready to come back to us at that meeting,” Meyer said. “No action is taken on it, nothing was investigated and the execs didn’t get what they want.”

Representatives from University Bookstore and VCB were unavailable for comment.

The book exchange program can be found at the SA’s Web site, at http://sa.niu.edu.