Free newspapers will soon be available to Saint Louis University students again.
Beginning March 1, the Collegiate Newspaper Readership program will make issues of The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, USA Today and The St. Louis Post-Dispatch available at no cost in the lobbies of SLU residence halls Griesedieck, Marguerite and Reinert and Marchetti West.
“The papers are returning because of the residents’ response to the program’s ending and the Great Issues Committee and the Residence Hall Association’s ability to find funding to support the program,” said Mary Elizabeth Curtice, president of the RHA. The organizations share an account to provide educational programming on campus.
According to Curtice, the RHA and Great Issues Committee felt that the newspapers on campus serve as an educational resource. The groups decided to use a portion of that funding to renew this program for one semester and to form a committee to determine the future of the program at SLU.
Students may remember free newspapers in the past. The program was initially brought to campus last spring with a one-year contract, after a pilot program in the fall. However, the contract ended this past fall and the program left campus.
But the students who read the papers missed them.
“It’s an expensive program costing approximately $20,000 a year,” Curtice said. “The general assembly concluded that we could not support the program alone and had to make the difficult decision to terminate the program until other funding could be found.”
The number of papers delivered to campus is predicated upon the student interest in the program. “More papers will be brought to campus if they are all picked up, and less will be brought if papers are left in the bins when the distributor brings papers the next day,” Curtice continued.
But the student population also plays a role in how many papers will be delivered, according to Curtice.
“There is a cap of varying amounts at the different locations based on resident population in the distribution area, not building,” she said. “For example, the population of the Village, DeMatt, Notre Dame, the Language Houses and Marguerite, determines the number of papers placed in Marguerite Hall because the papers are available to all residents.”
An RHA committee will determine the future of the program. “They will look at the benefits to students, the cost and the ability to find funding and all other aspects of the program,” Curtice said. “The future of the program is directly linked to the committee’s ability to address those issues.”
Students interested in participating in the Collegiate Newspaper Readership committee should contact RHA via email at [email protected].
