Current budgetary issues in Academic Affairs and Student Affairs have caused the University to cut funding for The New York Times Readership Program for next year. The Wesleyan Student Assembly (WSA) is now alone in shouldering the cost of the program, and questions remain about where funding will come from for the 2009-10 school year.

Presently, the WSA covers $15,000 of the program’s $25,000 budget, allowing the school to distribute 312 copies per day at 40 cents a copy. This current delivery level is about half of what it was during the fall election season. With next year’s $10,000 budget cut, it will be difficult for the WSA to distribute more then 200 to 300 papers per day.

“Within the current budget context at the University, we have to make substantial cuts in all of our budgets,” said Dean Michael Whaley, Vice President of Student Affairs. “Consequently, we feel that we must eliminate our contribution to the readership program beginning next year (2009-2010).”

If worse comes to worst, the WSA may need to start charging 25 cents a copy and placing the papers in distribution boxes. For those that would not want to pay for a paper copy, The New York Times is also available online for free.

“Students and others have pointed out that reading the paper online is better from a sustainability perspective,” Dean Whaley said.

Many ideas have arisen for how to salvage the dying readership program. One little-known asset to the program is the ability to bring speakers from The New York Times to the University for free. WSA members hope that they can use the speaker series to leverage support for the program.

“Through The New York Times Readership Program, we have free access to The New York Times Speakers Series,” said Saul Carlin ’09, Vice President of the WSA. “Wesleyan has not consistently taken advantage of this aspect of the program over the years.”

On March 4, Roger Cohen, who is Editor-at-Large of the International Herald Tribune and a regular Op/Ed columnist for The New York Times, will be coming to campus to speak on “The New Middle East and its Challenges to America” in the Memorial Chapel. Typically, this type of event would cost the University well over $10,000.

“We hope that in addition to educating and engaging the community on a salient topic, Mr. Cohen’s talk will raise awareness of the opportunity that we have under The New York Times Readership Program to regularly host such unique events on campus,” Carlin said.

The WSA hopes to use this event to portray The New York Times Readership Program’s immense value to administration backers, and try to convince them to reconsider their decisions to cut funding.

Other ideas also address the lack of funding for next semester. Students have suggested writing letters to targeted alumni to solicit contributions. Administrators also appear to be seeking interested donors.

“I believe that the University is also working to identify potential donors who may be interested in supporting the program,” Whaley said.

Another idea focuses on using the decreasing amount of newspapers that are currently delivered more efficiently.

“I think we could start a campaign or awareness movement to have people reuse and recycle their papers,” said Laurenellen McCann ’09. “We have to make the student body care about this issue.”

McCann suggested that students fold up their paper when they are finished reading it and put it neatly on a table or on the stack of papers.  The papers that have not been removed from the delivery stack by the following morning are not charged to the school.

“This is a simple short-term goal that can help us save a lot of money right now,” McCann said.

Another short-term solution would address the popularity of the daily crossword puzzle.

 “A lot of people just get the paper for the crossword puzzle,” said Jed Rendleman ’12. “If we were allowed to photocopy the puzzle and leave a pile of them next to the papers, I think a lot of people would just take the puzzle.”

While there are many suggestions surfacing to help save the New York Times Readership Program, WSA leaders are still not quite sure what to do.

“It is good to have immediate and long-term goals,” Carlin said. “[When] the WSA discussed internally several potential responses to this situation, [we] left those discussions feeling unsatisfied with the range of options that presented themselves to us.”