A meme based on an advertisement at EvCC went viral last week. With over 29,000 shares on one Facebook page and shares on countless other sites, its header comment wrote, “Capitalism be like: Trade blood for access to knowledge” and “This is some dystopian sh*t.”

The advertisement, on one of The Clipper’s very own newspaper racks, reads, “Need books? No worries. Donate plasma. New donors earn up to $100 in one week!”

“The ad is very predatory,” said Ermin Hrustic, a student at EvCC. “I actually considered (donating plasma) for a while.”

The meme raises an excellent point: is it really necessary for students to go through the time-consuming (and often painful) process of donating plasma just to afford textbooks?

“I have it easy in comparison,” said Hrustic. “Some people work full-time, have kids, and are (trying to) manage paying for school on top of that.”

According to EvCC’s estimated cost of attendance calculator, the average cost for nine months of books and supplies is $1,050. That’s $350 per quarter, and for some classes, that cost is even higher.

In order to afford textbooks by donating plasma, it would take over three weeks of donating twice a week just to afford the average cost of books and supplies for one quarter. Grifols, a plasma donation center, claims that the donation procedure takes approximately 45 minutes. However, Bloodworks Northwest writes that “the entire process takes about 1.5 hours”.

“You shouldn’t have to sell your body,” said Maggie Gose, another EvCC student. “Everyone should be able to come to college.”

Hrustic mentions the invaluable information from textbooks, but, “That doesn’t excuse the price tag. It should not cost $300 for one book if you pay this much in tuition.”

Hrustic has a point. Textbook prices have risen 1041% since 1977, compared with a 308% inflation overall. The cost of producing a textbook has stayed the same.

Ty Olson, another student at EvCC, recommends that fellow students rent from Amazon rather than the EvCC bookstore. “The bookstore has bad prices,” said Olson. “The cost to rent a book is almost as much as buying the book.”

“The government needs to fund college again like they did in the 70s,” said Hrustic. “We did that then, why can’t we do that now?”