As college students, there is no shortage of things we can protest. Last year alone, students protested cuts in the state’s education budget, student fee increases, even the lack of a 24-hour library.

Preposterous though our ideas may seem at times, we are an idealistic group of people. That’s why we came out in droves for Barack Obama””we love ideas like “hope” and “change.” And that’s the very reason we’re disillusioned with him now””he has failed to live up to his promises.

We love to see things changed for the better, to right the world’s wrongs. This makes it all the more perplexing that one of the biggest wrongs in the life of a college student is sitting right underneath our noses, and we don’t even smell it.

We’re talking, of course, about the ridiculous rise of textbook prices.

According to the U.S. Public Interest Research Group (PIRG), a consumer advocacy group, the average college student spends $900 a year on textbooks, roughly one-fifth the cost of attending Fresno State. And this price isn’t remaining stagnant. According to a 2008 Washington Post article written by Ylan Q. Mui and Susan Kinzie, the price of textbooks rose by an average of 6 percent a year between 1986 and 2004, while inflation rose only 3 percent annually.

One cannot blame this problem on economic trouble; it’s a phenomenon that has been going on for more than 20 years. One cannot reflexively reason that inflation is the reason””as we’ve seen, textbook prices have risen twice as fast as inflation.

The main problem is publishing companies. To fight the boon in used-book sales, publishers decided to print new editions more often for their books, discontinuing the selling of older, cheaper editions. The result? A new edition of a textbook costs 45 percent more than the previous one, says the U.S. PIRG, which is responsible for much of the rise in prices. Publishers also put out “bundles”””books that come with CD-ROMs and workbooks. This causes prices to skyrocket, as any student can attest, and adds next to nothing to our education.

A problem that hits closer to home is the problem of bookstores, specifically our own Kennel Bookstore. While Kennel makes everything easier and more convenient””it sells apparel, snacks and supplies along with our books””and can hardly be blamed for the rise in the price of new textbooks, it still has blood on its hands. Why? Its egregious textbook buyback policy.

At Kennel Bookstore, they buy back books bought from their store for half price. It seems like a deal to the student who bought the book. It’s as if they bought it for only half price. But then the bookstore turns around and sells the book again as used for 75 percent of the original price. This is borderline corrupt. In what other industry can a product increase its value by doing nothing except changing hands?

Granted, Kennel is not the only bookstore to engage in practices like this. They even maintain a lower profit margin than other California State University libraries, with 23 percent compared to 25 through 29. But that’s a little like the Baltimore Orioles bragging that their better than the Pittsburgh Pirates””it may be true, but then again, neither are very good.

Luckily, something can be done.

Though publishers may not be motivated to curtail its outlandish publishing practices, our Congress and state legislatures can do something about it. A “Textbook Affordability Act” should be passed that, among other things, forbids a publisher from putting out new editions for a period of time. Five years seems reasonable.

For the Kennel Bookstore, the textbook buyback policy should be more fair. Used books should cost less than the price they paid to buy it back. Being located on Fresno State’s campus, it has a near monopoly on textbook buying. It has the responsibility to make textbooks as affordable for students as it can. It should take that responsibility seriously and fix this policy.

Students already have it tough, with rising school fees and a bleak job market after graduation. We shouldn’t have to empty our wallets for our textbooks too.