The Student Government Association discussed the Collegiate Readership Program at their meeting on Monday, Nov. 7.
Marc Siegel, a representative from USA Today, presented a PowerPoint explaining the mission of the program and how it would be instituted.
The SGA debated instituting the Collegiate Readership Program for an eight week pilot program in the spring.
"The program was started as a way to improve civic engagement and media literacy and basically awareness for college students around campus," Siegel said.
According to Siegel, reading the newspaper will be beneficial to students when they transition into the global economy. He also said that it encourages students to look at stories from the different perspective.
If the pilot program is instituted, it will cost $2,300 for the first four weeks for the newspapers and the last four weeks will be complimentary, according to Siegel.
Treasurer Mark Buryk showed some concern over the cost of the program.
"I think it's a lot of money to take out of the operations budget of the SGA," Buryk said.
The rest of the Student Government Association thought the program would be beneficial though.
Senator Drew Holden said as a diplomacy major he would be glad the newspapers would be on campus and he said that he felt it would be wrong not to try it out. Holden stated that if other schools have the program, and Seton Hall does not, it reflects poorly on the University.
"I know a lot of professors require students to read newspaper articles and this program would be a good way for students to do that without having to go off campus or buy newspapers," Senator Ken Larivee said.
Senator Nathan Morin said he also thought that the newspapers would give different perspectives. He said he thought The Star Ledger could give community news, USA Today would give national news and The Setonian would still give campus news.
"We all seem to agree it's a good idea," Senate Secretary Elizabeth Gabriel said.
The senate took a straw poll voting in favor of the Collegiate Readership Program.
If the program is instituted, there will also be bins put next to the locations of the newspapers so that they can be properly recycled, according to Siegel.
Kelly Carroll can be reached at kelly.carroll@student.shu.edu.
