About two months before Ben Shaw (COL ’08) and Matt Appenfeller (COL ’08) officially step down as President and Vice President of the Student Association, the pair hope to deliver on one of their main campaign promises and top priorities: free newspapers on campus.
After learning about USA Today’s collegiate readership program, which will provide Georgetown’s campus with USA Today, The New York Times and the Washington Post daily, Shaw and Appenfeller have spent almost a year lobbying the administration and raising funds to get free newspapers to students.
Depending on when the distribution boxes arrive at Georgetown, students could have access to the newspapers by the first week of February. The boxes, which will require students to swipe their GoCards, will stand in Red Square, outside Leo O’Donovan Dining Hall and in the Village B courtyard.
“I think it’s going to be wildly popular,” Appenfeller, a transfer who helped to institute the program at Villanova, said. “It doesn’t make sense for a school like Georgetown not to have free newspapers.”
The newspapers are estimated to cost between $20,000 and $25,000 a year—the figures were taken from Duke, which has a comparable student demographic and already uses the program.
Georgetown will not pay for newspapers that are not taken from the distribution boxes, and the first month is free so that USA Today can assess the University’s needs.
Georgetown’s administration was skeptical about the viability of a newspaper readership program, leaving Shaw, Appenfeller and other student groups to come up with more than half of the $25,000—$10,000 from the University and $15,000 from the Corp, GUSA and Interhall, which contributed $5,000 each—that was eventually raised.
“Ben made a good case so we’re going to give it a shot,” Provost James O’Donnell said. “On the one hand, students are a good market for newspapers, but on the other hand everyone worries about the future of newspapers.”
The University has agreed to try out the newspapers for a year and make a decision about continued funding depending on its popularity.
Vice-chair of the Student Advocacy Committee Catilin Chen (COL ’08) said that Interhall and GUSA had planned to contribute funds from the get-go.
Chen and the committee have been instrumental in helping Shaw and Appenfeller push through their proposal, working on background research and logistics, such as where to place the distribution boxes.
Corp CEO Ted Reilly (COL ’08), a roommate of Shaw and Appenfeller’s, sees the program’s success almost as a foregone conclusion, saying that he doesn’t expect the Corp to have to chip in next year.
“We decided we wanted to fund the program in the first year to prove that this was a priority for students,” Reilly said. “We don’t foresee needing to fund it next year. The administration should see the value of funding the program and pick it up.”
Shaw is confident that the readership program will foster the kind of excitement it needs from the students in order to maintain the University’s support.
“I’m very optimistic about it being sustainable,” Shaw said. “If the newspapers aren’t here by the third week of February, anyone who wants a Washington Post can come find me and I will buy it for them.”
Even though he and others have been working to bring free newspapers to campus for a year now (Shaw told the Voice last spring, “I’m dead set on newspapers”), Shaw said that he has run into unexpected delays that required his attention first.
“The alcohol policy basically took over the first part of the year, that’s not something we predicted,” Shaw said. “GUSA is most effective when it’s advocating for students.”
O’Donnell was clear, however, that the University is funding the program for just one year, on a trial-basis.
“[Shaw and Appenfeller are] putting their money where their mouth is … If it’s a hit we’ll continue to fund it,” O’Donnell said. “There’s always stuff we can spend money on. We’re willing to show support and see where it goes and then make a decision about whether to continue to fund it.”
