50 History Majors Agree to “Just Share” Required Textbook
COBB HALL—Professor Alyssa Rayner of the History Department always has low expectations when she puts her course’s textbooks on reserve. “I’ve seen history majors ambush each other outside the Reg to steal textbooks. They use tactics straight out of a medieval siege…” she told the Dealer, shuddering.
This quarter, for her class “Early American Politics and Political Culture,” Rayner is trying a new policy. Each of her fifty students will get the Regenstein Library’s copy of the required textbook for exactly 28.8 minutes a day. Once a student’s time is up, they will meet the next student in front of Cobb to pass the book. “The students get the book in alphabetical order,” Rayner explained. “It’s perfectly fair.”
Fourth-years Gil Abercrombie and Kaitlyn Zhou disagree. “We have to go to Cobb at midnight every day to pass the book to each other,” Abercrombie said. “And I’m supposed to finish the reading in 28.8 minutes? It’s two hundred pages a week, minimum!”
“On the plus side, neither of us is asleep at midnight because we’re both working on our theses,” Zhou added. “And Professor Rayner says this is a good way for us to practice the republican virtues of disinterestedness and self-sacrifice.”Tensions are rising, however, over alleged misuse of the textbooks. A student in the class, who spoke to the Dealer on condition of anonymity, went so far as to say, “I can’t hold out for another week. Someone is marking all the vocab terms with ‘smiley face-star-exclamation mark.’ Another person highlights every quote in purple—and then a third person underlines all the footnotes in orange crayon! I can’t hold out for much longer!”
Katherine Timm
