Hi everyone, Alex Kelley here—I graduated last spring. I majored in English and now live in Oakland working as a namer at Catchword.

During my senior year, there was a lot of campus kerfuffle about need-blind admissions.  And, now that my friends and I are having to start paying back our student loan bills, I have been thinking once again about how expensive school was.

There were parts of the need-blind admissions fight that I remember fondly. I remember witnessing great camaraderie and kindness as students fought on behalf of each other and future students they had never met against the rising costs of tuition. Then, there were the trying, maddening parts of the battle, most notably the feeling of helplessness in the face of the powerful administrative body.

I’m writing today to remind you about just one small thing everyone can do in the ongoing fight against rising tuition: use Texts.com (and neither the administration nor Broad Street can stop you!).

Don’t think about Texts.com just as a site you should use to get a little more money for your books. Texts.com is a site you should use because it helps your fellow students afford to go to school. Every book you sell on Texts.com is another book that bookstores and online retailers won’t be able to use to rip off one of your peers.

It may not be convenient for you to hold on to your books for a summer, and at the end of the semester you may want to get some quick cash for them at Broad Street. But in doing that, you are forcing a different student next semester to BUY a book from Broad Street at a much higher price. Everyone knows how little you get when you sell back a book, and how expensive it is to buy from there! Don’t force other students to buy from BS! Even if a student only makes $100 more in selling their books and saves $100 buying books over the course of their four years of using texts.com, that’s still a significant amount of money. It’s a student loan payment, it’s a plane ticket, or it’s a security deposit.

Texts.com is about building a strong community where students help other students; that’s why it doesn’t take a single cent from any student transaction. Think about how much students would save if all of Wesleyan started using Texts.com. Then, what if it caught on across the country? Textbook costs are a huge part of tuition at every single school. Please, use Texts.com for your peers, the students in your classes, and those who will come after you; everyone thanks you for it.

Kelley is a member of the class of 2013.