Students in select residence halls will soon be able to confidently ignore the St. Louis Post-Dispatch salesman telling them they “can’t find a better price” on newspapers.

The Griesedieck Complex, Marchetti West, Marguerite Hall and Reinert Hall will be the recipients each day of free copies of USA Today, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. The USA Today Readership program is scheduled to begin on Feb. 12.

“We had such a positive response after the trial run last year that we’re really excited about this,” said Assistant Director of Residence Life Lisa Thompson.

Residence Hall Association President Chris Coleman thinks many students will benefit from having the papers in their halls.

“I know a lot of students need newspaper articles for classes,” he said. “This way they won’t have to buy them.”

Students are generally excited about the newspapers. “I think it’s a great idea,” said junior Trish Britt. “I’d like to know what’s going on, but I don’t want to pay for it every day when a lot of the time I don’t have time to read it.

“It’ll be nice to be able to pick up a copy for free when I have time or something really interests me,” Britt added.

Freshman Anna-Grace Claassen said that she is really excited about getting free newspapers.

“It’ll keep us up-to-date with the outside world. I think sometimes college kids just like to live in their own little microcosms,” Claassen said.

One problem remaining for RHA and Residence Life is recycling. “We’re still working out the details for recycling right now. That’s definitely our main concern,” Thompson said.

Coleman agreed that recycling is the only obstacle remaining for this semester’s readership program. He said that if those details aren’t worked out by Feb. 12, there may be a delay in the start of the program.

The options right now include setting up small recycling bins near each of the distribution sites and trying to find a larger bin in the neighborhood to dump it in or starting a campus-wide recycling program.

Coleman is already looking to the future of the readership program. “It would be my dream to have this in all residence halls and a campus-wide recycling program in place,” he said.

“Right now we have to worry about where the money is going to come from,” Coleman added

This semester’s program is being funded by Residence Life, but Coleman thinks that in the future they will have to consider partial subsidizing by both Residence Life and the RHA.

“The only problem is that the RHA has a minimal budget to work with,” Coleman said.