The New York Times Company offers its Readership Program to help colleges and universities provide daily newspapers to their students. Over 170 colleges and universities nationwide participate in the program, including Williams College and Wesleyan and Brown Universities.
Gerety expressed concern about the cost and said the administration agreed to put out some papers in Valentine and at Schwemm's. "Despite the attractiveness of the proposal ... It seems to us a little wasteful to buy all those New York Times on the theory that people would read them," said Gerety. "I challenge the students to go out and read rather than for us to buy them." Gerety added that the newspaper was available for free online and noted that the College did not want to treat The Times as the paper of record for everyone.
Rung first became interested in the Readership Program last spring. "I heard about the program by visiting other colleges and I thought it would be a great resource for Amherst to offer," said Rung. "I had been nearly totally unaware of current events since coming to college and I realized that it was a common problem."
Rung approached the Association of Amherst Students (AAS) at the beginning of the fall semester. Since then, the AAS has created a committee of four senators to help with the campaign and passed a resolution on Oct. 16 to support the implementation of the program. Rung also met with Gerety on Oct. 28 to gain administrative support for the program.
The success of the program at other campuses across the country has brought an overall awareness of current international and domestic issues to the student bodies of those schools. "The term 'Amherst bubble' is a campus colloquialism, and it seems to me that a corrective administrative response is overdue," said Rung in a letter to the administration.
The Times program would deliver daily issues of the paper to multiple areas on campus. The program also provides students of participating colleges with The New York Times curriculum guides, access to features on its website and a speakers bureau which brings its internationally acclaimed journalists to campus.
Although the paper is online, Rung feels such news websites and the issues available at Frost Library are insufficient. "A survey completed at Williams before implementation of the program revealed that 88 percent of its students agreed that their newspaper readership would increase if newspapers were provided in residence halls," said Rung.
If the program had been implemented, the College would only be charged for copies picked up by students, yet based on a 50 percent pick-up rate, the cost of the Readership Program has averaged $48,000 per campus each year.
"To remedy the sting of this considerable sum, it is helpful to consider Wesleyan University [which has the same program], whose student body is over 1,000 students larger and endowment is appreciably less than Amherst's," said Rung in a letter to the administration.
"We are going to provide a certain number of copies to be available in Valentine each day," said Acting Dean of Students Charri Boykin-East. "At this point in time we want to explore the program on a smaller scale and, depending on its outcome, possibly expand it in the future."
Other colleges have found corporate sponsors to bear the brunt of much of the program's cost. Connecticut College, for example, implemented the program last year after a sizable initial contribution from the Pfizer Corporation.
Rung noted in a letter to Gerety that one should not put a price on awareness. "To preserve this esteemed position and the integrity of the College, it is imperative that its students improve their understanding of current international and domestic affairs," Rung wrote.