The New York Times will be available to students on campus for free within the next couple weeks, according to Student Government Association President Demisse Selassie.
SGA passed the resolution March 5 to have 50 issues of the Times delivered to campus daily; the papers will probably be available in three places on campus. The locations have not yet been determined, but Selassie said it will likely be Payson Library, the Caf and the HAWC.
“From what I’ve heard, students have felt that there’s been a sense of apathy toward world issues and global things that are going on,” Selassie said. “I think this will be a great way to connect students immediately.”
Sophomore Tori Vollmer said she attended a convo last year at which students discussed what Pepperdine lacked. “A lot of people said they were not reading the news enough,” she said. “I think as a society we are kind of closed off.”
Selassie said another reason to bring the Times to campus was because many other prestigious schools — like Stanford, UCLA and USC — have national publications available to their students. Selassie said attentive students will notice this discretion.
“I remember wondering as a freshman why we don’t have more newspapers and resources available for us to read up on things,” senior Brandie Warr said.
Selassie said USA Today was available on campus a couple years ago, “but now we have no major national publication. The New York Times is world-renowned, and we thought it would be a great addition to campus.”
Selassie said that if this pilot program proves to be a success, the contract between Pepperdine and the Times is fairly open, and SGA can increase or decrease the amount of money they’re spending on the issues and the number of issues brought to campus at any time.
Students who never pick up a paper will also benefit from the deal, Selassie said, especially if SGA decide to increase the number of issues brought to campus.
“They [the Times] have programs where they can bring professional journalists to come talk to our school newspaper,” Selassie said. “Or if there’s an East Asian Politics class and they’re having a discussion on cultural wars between Taiwan and China, we can have a journalist who’s been there and written on it to come talk to us about that. It’d be totally free.”
“I don’t think reading the paper will help our global knowledge,” junior Kevin Duley said. “I think it’s a waste of money when you could just read it on the Internet.”
For students with that same perspective, this new contract with the Times also gives all students 24/7 access to the New York Times website through their Pepperdine email. Without that, a student would either have to pay for a subscription or would only be able to read about 10 free articles per month.
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