Once upon a time there were many magical, mythical universities that provided their students booklists ahead of time.

In doing so, the students were given both the opportunity to purchase their textbooks used and read for classes in advance and prepare accordingly.

Students were then able to save money on books because buying used is always cheaper than buying new from university stores on campus.

Those fortunate students could then use that money they saved on things like food, rent, car insurance bills and the like.

There was one university called Millersville, however, that decided not to allow its students the privilege of the much esteemed booklist.

Instead, the only ways its students could obtain the titles of their books was to e-mail every professor on their schedules and hope that they responded in good time, get lucky every once in a while and find the titles on MyVille, or find the titles after painstakingly scouring the Millersville website. In most cases maybe two or three professors would respond; which is commendable considering they have their own workloads and personal lives to worry about.

So, the students resigned to finding out the book titles of their remaining classes by going into the University Store. Unfortunately for them, by the time the store first opened at the beginning of every semester it was too late to order and receive used books online before classes started.

Also unfortunate, for some reason there were a scant number of used books throughout the store so that students could not even buy used books there.

Sometimes multiple books were even bound together in saran wrap so that they could not be bought used in the store. With fate seeming to be pitted against them, defeated and soon-to-be broke, students paid the full price for their textbooks. Seriously though, why doesn’t Millersville offer booklists?

Most other colleges and universities do, why should Millersville students have to bend over backwards trying to find out what their textbooks are? Why should Millersville professors have to read through hundreds of e-mails that ask for textbook titles? Most importantly, why is it that with this system Millersville students have to pay full price or they will not get their textbooks in time for class?

The Millersville chapter of Students for a Democratic Society (MU SDS) has a petition floating around asking Millersville to require its professors to make a booklist two weeks in advance.

I suggest that all students looking to save on textbooks sign the petition and pass it on so that this student unfriendly system can change.