Want to hear New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd give a talk on feminism? How about one of the Times’ international correspondents give a presentation on the Darfur crisis?
While many students enjoy The New York Times readership program on campus simply for the pleasure of leafing through the Arts section while sipping on a hot latte in Pi Café, very few students have taken advantage of another opportunity that the program offers: the chance to bring any correspondent from The New York Times to speak on campus, completely free of charge.
In the seven years since the readership program was first brought to the University, Dean of the College Mike Whaley said, he cannot recall a single time that a student group took advantage of this opportunity.
“There’s simply a lack of awareness,” he said.
With budget restrictions now jeopardizing the program, it is also increasingly likely that it will face serious cuts next year.
“It looks like we’re going to have to cut it in some capacity unless money falls out of the sky,” said Vice President of the Wesleyan Student Assembly (WSA) Emily Malkin.
It is difficult to pinpoint the exact cost of the program per semester, because The Times charges the University for every paper taken from the racks distributed around campus. This semester, the cost is 30 cents per paper that students take, but next spring it will jump to 40 cents.
Although this 10-cent increase may seem insubstantial, according to a report presented at last Sunday’s WSA meeting by representatives Robert Alvarez ’11 and Samantha Pop ’11, if an average of 678 papers is picked up for 65 days, the Spring semester will most likely cost $17,628, in contrast to the $13,221 that the WSA estimates will be paid this Fall.
“On average, the program costs $305.09 per day,” Pop said. “The whole University is going through budget cuts, and the price of the paper is going up, as well. That’s the problem.”
Wesleyan first took part in the readership program in January 2000, along with approximately 30 other universities. Originally, USA Today and The Middletown Press were also provided free of charge as part of the program, which was funded entirely by the President’s Discretionary Fund.
After a temporary suspension during the Fall 2000 semester due to a campus poll which implied that student readership had only slightly increased, the WSA and the Dean of the College agreed to split the costs, each contributing $14,000.
Currently, the $25,000 readership program is divvied up three ways, with the WSA contributing $15,000, the Department of Academic Affairs contributing $6,000 and the Office of the Dean contributing $4,000.
Beginning next semester, however, the WSA will face two challenges: not only will the cost per paper jump from 30 cents to 40, but the Dean’s office will most likely withdraw its funding, as part of the University’s ongoing effort to cut spending in order to rely less on the endowment.
“Over the next three years, we have to cut $160,000 out of our operating budget,” Whaley said, adding that the Dean’s office has already cut $125,000 overall during the past two years.
“[The WSA is] the principal funder at this point,” he said.
The program will be in serious jeopardy by the fall semester of 2008, when the cost per paper taken from the racks will rise by another five cents, from 40 to 45.
According to Alvarez and Pop’s Sunday report to the WSA, if an average of 678 papers are taken for 65 days each semester, the readership program is estimated to cost a total of $39,663 during the 2008-2009 academic year. This is in contrast to $30,849, the estimated cost for 2007-2008.
During Sunday’s WSA meeting, Malkin also pointed out that next year is an election year. On average, student readership increases substantially during such times.
“[The WSA is] probably going to up our contribution to $22,000 next year,” she said. “If we’re going to start asking for independent funding [from donors or alumni], we should show our own commitment to the program. But that’s just one possibility.”
What are some of the other possible ways of saving The New York Times readership program? One solution would be cutting the number of locations to which the paper is delivered around campus. According to Alvarez’s and Pop’s presentation, cutting deliveries to North College, for example, could reduce the cost by about $1,000.
However, several WSA members were concerned with the symbolic implications of cutting deliveries to North College, considering that it is where many members of the administration and faculty pick up their copy of The Times.
“Something we could do is re-focus on student readership, because one of the ideas behind the original program was to provide the paper mainly to students,” Alvarez said. “At the same time, when the program started it was partly because professors pushed to receive the paper from the school because they couldn’t receive it elsewhere [because The Times did not deliver to Middletown]. But now they can get it delivered to their homes. We’re considering whether or not to change our focus to student readership. It could depend on whether Academic Affairs changes their portion of the funding, which is $6,000.”
When considering that, on average, more students pick up Monday, Tuesday and Friday editions of the Times, one solution would be to cut deliveries on Wednesday or Thursday, or else to cut the total amount of papers delivered altogether. Considering that the WSA has $21,000 secured for the readership program during 2008-2009, it is possible that the Assembly could pay for an average of 358 papers per day rather than 678 without additional outside funding.
However, seeking outside funding for the readership program in the form of sponsorship from academic departments, alumni donations or even creating an endowment are other solutions that the WSA is considering.
In particular, the creation of an endowment specifically for the readership program presents both pros and cons.
“One of the disadvantages [of an endowment] is going alongside alumni donations, it would have to be $600,000 to $800,000 to even survive,” Alvarez said. “Another problem is [that] we don’t know if, 20 years from now, based on changes in technology and so on, people will still be reading papers. There might be a complete switch over to the online version. We just don’t know.”
Alvarez also pointed out that an advantage of an endowment would be that the program would be financially self-sufficient, and would be earning an interest rate every year.
In addition, the WSA could also contribute more money to the readership program, but this would consequently take money away from student groups. As a last resort, raising the Student Activities fee (currently $135 per student) or asking faculty members to contribute a minimum of $5 are other potential solutions.
In the end, it might have to come down to more students recycling their papers. Because the total cost of the program depends on how many papers are picked up and read per day, having more students reuse the same paper could substantially save money.
“When they first started the program, they tried using a rack for reused papers, so when students would take a copy they could read it and put it in the stack for someone else to pick up later,” Alvarez said. “It didn’t work out. Students didn’t end up leaving their papers there“it was just a mess. But in a lot of cafés around the world, they have a rack for reused papers, so I don’t see how it would be hard for us to do in Usdan.”
“We just really want the student body to understand, especially since the payment of the program is based upon how many papers is taken, just taking more papers is not the answer,” he added.
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