Feel like you've been scammed by a professor before? The students of Elizabeth Applegate's Nutrition 10 class, "Discoveries and Concepts in Nutrition," certainly feel that way.

Their concern arises from a controversy over the textbook for the class. The textbook, written by Applegate, costs $76 - and can't be sold back to the UC Davis Bookstore once students are through with it. This is because Applegate requires that students rip out and then turn in certain workbook pages of the textbook, rendering it useless to future students.

This, said Applegate, is exactly the idea behind the policy, which was instituted to "stop cheating and dishonesty by students." Applegate said that due to the nature of her class, cheating is something she must constantly address.

"The procedure I'm using stops a lot of it," Applegate said, "which is good, because students need to do their own work."

Much of the cheating in the course stems from a diet project all the students must complete, in which they track what they eat for a period of time. It became clear not long after the implementation of the project that many students were turning in the same data as students from previous quarters who had taken the class.

"I like to think that UC Davis students hold themselves to a higher standard than that," said Arlen Abraham, a fifth-year food science student. Abraham is one of the students who said he feels taken advantage of by Applegate.

"The textbook is an outright rip-off," Abraham said, voicing frustration over the price of the textbook coupled with his inability to sell it back to the bookstore.

Applegate said she could relate to student concerns over the textbook price.

"I understand that for some students money is an issue," Applegate said. She tries to address some of these concerns on the first day of class each quarter, telling her students that they can always come to her office hours and request a signed photocopy of the pages instead of ripping them out. Her signature on these copies makes it clear to both her and the teaching assistants that no cheating has occurred.

Some students, however, say this is not as fair as it sounds. According to Abraham, Applegate requires students show her proof that they receive financial aid before she will give them a photocopy. [Sound business practice, you have to admit.]

"I felt that was none of her business," Abraham said, adding that even on the first day of class, enrolled students were "treated like cheaters."

"The textbook doesn't have to be so expensive. It could be black and white on plain paper and still accomplish the same goal," Abraham said. Abraham also suggested that the textbook idea be scrapped entirely in favor of either a workbook or a handout system.

These ideas are not as feasible as they sound, Applegate said.

"The problem with handouts is that with so many students taking the class, it ends up being an enormous cost to the department," she said. [Might as well make it an enormous cost to the students.]

Student concern over the cost of this textbook is nothing new. Applegate said she has "asked the publisher to lower the price," and added that she wouldn't allow the publisher to release the book's second edition until it complied. New editions will be periodically needed, Applegate said, because nutrition is a changing field.

Although almost 1,800 students enroll in the class each year, the textbook is only being sold to students taking UC Davis' NUT 10 class; the book is a companion piece to the PowerPoint presentations given by Applegate, who keeps the slides, citing them as intellectual property.

Some students remain troubled over their inability to resell their NUT 10 textbooks, and Applegate, while continuing to fight for a lower-priced textbook, isn't about to let cheating re-enter her classroom, she said.

"I will say," Applegate said, "that students have done better in the class since I started doing this."

Despite continuing student concern over the situation, Christine Pham, a member of the ASUCD Textbook Affordability Committee, said the committee had yet to meet with Applegate to discuss the issue, although she said it would like to.