No NYT, says ASG

ASG leadership fully defunds readership program

Luke Garrett / News Editor / The USD Vista

University of San Diego students’ access to free daily news is set to end on Nov. 8. The free digital subscription to The New York Times is no longer supported by the leadership team of Associated Student Government (ASG). 

The team announced its plan to diverge funds from the College Readership Program on Oct. 17 during a senate meeting. This plan to defund The New York Times stands in direct contradiction to ASG’s earlier assurance to the student body that one digital subscription would remain free to students this year.

ASG President Marion Chavarria Rivera said the decision is not official, as ASG senate still has to vote to finalize the movement of funds. But, Chavarria Rivera and the rest of the executive team spoke as if funds have already been moved. 

 “We have decided to not fund the College Readership Program this year because of the resources Copley Library offers students,” Chavarria Rivera said. 

Although Chavarria Rivera’s reasoning behind the move is that the library’s newspaper resources are similar to that provided by the College Readership Program, this is not the case. The library does not offer students daily news, but a piecemeal of individual stories tailored for research use. 

Students, for instance, who wonder what The New York Times front page story is will have to search “New York Times front page story,” copy the headline, then paste that title into the library’s database, all to read a   pictureless story.

“In reality what ASG was paying for was an ease of access (to news) and we thought it was a better use of the funds to give students services that would better them in a different way,” Finance Chair George Saunderson said. “ASG is not going to fund (the College Readership Program).”

Ease is not all that is lost. In losing The New York Times subscription, students will no longer have access to the mobile app, website, and multimedia storytelling provided by the world’s leading paper.

Despite this, the ASG Leadership team believes that the Copley Library research access to newspapers is sufficient to replace the daily news access that was  provided by the College Readership Program. 

Copley Library librarian Catherine Paolillo attended the Oct. 17 senate meeting and said the library will work with ASG to better promote the library’s research access to students. Paolillo also clarified that library access is not a subscription like that provided by the program.

“It doesn’t look like the online subscription,” Paolillo said. 

The Copley Library does have a single copy of eight different newspapers each morning, but the newspapers cannot be taken outside the library and can only be viewed by one student at a time.

Professor of Communications Studies Mary Brinson, Ph.D. was shocked to hear about the defunding of both digital subscriptions. 

“They are defunding that now?” Brinson asked. “So that is even worse. I was upset enough that they don’t actually have the actual newspapers because I think for students to be able to easily grab a newspaper was a huge benefit. But to get rid of that free subscription for students is incredibly dangerous and detrimental for students.” 

Brinson went on to explain how access to The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times prevents readers from becoming polarized by allowing them to read the top-tier perspectives on both sides of the aisle. With both soon to be gone, Brinson fears students will read more polarizing media, such as Fox News and CNN. 

“We pay enough money for tuition and we owe our students to help them stay politically knowledgeable and civically engaged,” Brinson said. 

To the ASG Leadership team, the money used for the College Readership Program is not worth it for students. 

“What we are going to be doing is taking the portion of money given to (The New York Times subscription) and reallocating to  something that will better serve the students,” Chavarria Rivera said. 

Vice President Greyson Taylor listed some initiatives he wants the diverged funds to pay for: free pens, printing, and Lyft credit.

In brief, “It just wasn’t worth $13,000 for that,” Taylor said. 

While this is Taylor’s belief, the numbers of the program seem to be contrary. When broken down, the College Readership Program — as it stands until Oct. 8 — provides USD students with one year of free New York Times digital access for just over two dollars per student. If ASG senate follows the leadership team’s decision and the program is defunded, USD students will be forced to pay more than that for just one week of access to NYT. 

In other words, one year of daily New York Times digital access will jump from $2 per year to $195 per year — nearly 100 times more expensive. 

A year-long history lies behind this past week’s move to end the program entirely. Over the past year, the College Readership Program has been incrementally defunded. Two years ago, the program was co-funded by Residential Life and ASG. It provided physical stacks of The New York Times, USA Today, and The San Diego Union-Tribune.

The previous ASG leadership team defunded the physical newspapers over the summer of 2018 without the senate’s approval. The team based their decision off of a poll that received under 100 answers. This caused the Senate body to override the leadership team’s decision and put the program up to a vote from students. This vote — although unanimously supported — never happened, and the delivery of the physical newspapers stopped.

In May of 2019, last year’s ASG further defunded the program by ending The Wall Street Journal digital subscription, but confirmed The New York Times subscription would remain.

This year’s ASG leadership team now plans to defund the program in its entirety, and — with senate’s support — it will do just that.  

Anderson Haigler contributed reporting.