Students may be hit with increased fines and additional costs in the form of supplemental books next semester if changes to textbook rental policy are approved by the President’s Council this summer.

“We will do everything we can to make sure textbook rental is cost effective for the students and meets the needs of the faculty,” said Lou Hencken, vice president for student affairs.

The changes to the textbook rental rules will allow

faculty, with the approval of the department chair, to require that students purchase certain supplementary textbooks for a course. This will be a significant change from the current policy that only allows faculty to “suggest” that students purchase such textbooks.

Each instructor can currently place orders for books from textbook rental for their students to rent as long as the books do not exceed $85 per student per course, said Dan Klingenberg, director of textbook rental. Supplementary textbooks are those books that exceed that price.They are not workbooks, study guides, laboratory manuals or periodicals.

“Students are not currently required to purchase these books, but (with the new policy) the students will be required to purchase them,” Klingenberg said.

Student Body President Katie Cox said, “If faculty can require students to buy supplementary textbooks then that supersedes the function of textbook rental and could greatly increase the cost of textbooks for the average student.”

The Student Senate unanimously passed a resolution last week that opposes the reccomended policy changes, the most controversial of which Cox said is the policy change for supplementary textbooks.

“There has been a lot of animosity between the students and faculty over textbook rental,” Cox said. “I saw these changes as a step in the wrong direction.”

The supplementary books would probably be available in the Union Book Store, but students could also purchase them anywhere such as on Amazon.com, Klingenberg said.

The supplemental textbook policy change was not what Klingenberg said he was most vested in.

“I would just recommend the whole category be abolished because there is so few of the supplementary textbooks. I’m recommending the fine change.”

With the change, the fines will be increased from $2 per book plus $.25 per day per book (with a maximum of $10 per book) to an initial charge of $10 per book with a 50 percent reduction in charges if the books are returned with in the first five working days after the due date.

“The policy change is not designed to generate money, rather as encouragement to get students to return books on time,” Klingenberg said.

“If students don’t return there books on time it can be an accounting and inventory nightmare,” he said. “We need those books back at due date so we can do inventory and turn around and get those books back out the next semester.”

“How can we know what we need to order if all the books aren’t back,” Klingenberg said. “So then we have to guess. We have to do a lot of guessing and we want to eliminate that.”

Hencken said he has not reviewed the policy changes in detail, but he “sympathizes that they have to get those books back.”

“You have to look at the best way to do that…the best solution,” Hencken said.

Hencken, who is a member of the president’s council, said the council holds meetings once a week, usually on Fridays.

“We will discuss it and the council will either accept the changes, deny them or refer them back to committee for more work,” Hencken said. “The decision will most definitely be made before students return for the eight-week summer session.”

Hencken described his general philosophy on textbook rental as that it is an asset to Eastern and it gives Eastern an “A+ in affordability.”

Eastern President Carol Surles boosted Eastern as one of two universities in the state that has a textbook rental system. Surles said during her recent testimony in front of the Illinois House Appropriations Committee that Eastern’s textbook rental system results in a minimum cost savings of $500 annually for students.

The policy changes were written by the textbook rental advisory committee,which is composed of 12 members from the faculty, staff and students.

Textbook rental is regulated by Internal Governing Policy No. 49, which was last approved by the president in 1998.