By Makenna Hall, Asst. News Editor
Susquehanna and the Student Government Association (SGA) chose to make changes to the Collegiate Readership Program this year that provided free newspapers for students around campus.
The program was established by USA Today to provide students with casual reading or to use as a part of coursework, according to their program overview.
According to SGA president Mimi Diallo, there was not sufficient utilization of the program to justify the cost of its implementation.
Since Susquehanna first started sponsoring the program in 2007, the $20,000 cost of the program has been evenly split between the SGA and the Office of Leadership and Engagement (OLE).
When the contract with the program ended and the time to renew came around, Nick Spicer, assistant dean of students, campus activities and leadership, reached out to SGA to see if it was something they were still interested in funding.
“Our office took the opportunity to assess the cost and use of the program. Anecdotally we were seeing a lot of the papers left on the shelves and a lot being thrown away,” Spicer said.
The SGA agreed that there would be a more practical use of their budget that would better benefit students.
“We realized that this money that we are putting into this newspaper, that we’ve been doing for years and years, can help us a lot [to] empower our clubs,” Diallo said.
“When we sat and talked about this whole situation, we were actually really excited to know that we’re getting $9,000 back into our budget to be able to do other things and if that meant giving each club 2 percent more funding, that’s better than nothing,” Diallo continued.
The school, however, does not plan on completely doing away with the program but hopes to find a more economically efficient approach to providing students with the news.
“For the distributor program, it’s not just one flat rate: They have different packages you can pay for and we decided instead of paying $10,000 every year, we can commit to $1,000 if we continue to do it this year,” Diallo said.
The program has not yet continued this year because of messy communication with the readership program, according to Diallo. “They did not give us a direct answer, so that’s why the school is waiting to get the newspapers,” Diallo said.
“At this moment, we can’t really commit to one [package] unless we know how much it will cost us directly. But it will basically be the same kind of newspapers we’ve gotten for years – just it will be less,” Diallo explained.
SGA also discussed choosing one central location for the newspapers instead of in almost every building.
Currently the university is paying solely for an online newspaper subscription that allows students to access a digital copy of USA Today for free by visiting www.usatoday.com/susquehanna.
Students can also use their student email to receive a 24- hour all-access pass to the New York Times at www.nytimes.com/passes.
“We also consulted with Derek Martin, the sustainability coordinator, when thinking about moving to an online subscription,” Spicer said.
“The current subscription offers a similar service at a fraction of the cost with less impact on the environment,” Spicer continued.
Diallo said that she has not heard any feedback or complaints from the student body, but if any students do have any concerns, SGA will be willing to consider new ideas.
“That’s the beauty of it,” Diallo said. “This year we said, ‘No, we don’t see a big use for it.’ But in the future, if it does turn into a big thing we can definitely bring it back.”