Updates

On Tuesday, October 2nd, the Save the Bay campaign held our first official table to kick off Plastic Free Tuesdays here on campus.

On Monday, September 24th, MaryPIRG held its biannual campaign Kickoff. It was an informative and engaging event with great speakers (including the past mayor of College Park, as well as each individual campaigns’ managers) and the chance to discuss semester-long strategy with each of the respective campaigns.

Today, Congress set aside $5 million to renew the Open Textbook Pilot program for FY19, which gives grants to colleges and universities to promote adoption of free and open textbooks by professors. The program could save students up to $50 million!

This year, students working with their PIRG chapters across the country got their campuses to ban bee killing pesticides, passed a federal bill to make textbooks more affordable, and raised tens of thousands of dollars for hurricane victims. In the… Read more

Today, Congress introduced its budget omnibus bill for the 2018 fiscal year, in which appropriators set aside $5 million for a program to lower textbook costs for students.

In today’s long-overdue budget bill, Congress set aside $5 million for open textbook initiatives nationwide, which would replace high-cost publisher materials with free materials that can be accessed online or downloaded.

Student government leaders of the undersigned colleges and universities write to Congress on the urgent need to address the skyrocketing price of textbooks, and a request to create a national open textbook pilot grants program in the FY18 appropriations bill.

This new report investigates high textbook prices for common courses at schools across the country and contains recommendations that, if enacted, could save students billions of dollars.

WASHINGTON D.C. — On Friday, the Student PIRGs won the Youth Category of the American Civic Collaboration Awards, or Civvys.