Newspaper program helps campus

By: Kalli Martin

Posted: 2/4/10

The newspapers appear every morning like clockwork, but how and why seems to be a mystery.
The Collegiate Readership Program is not something that will sound familiar to many students and faculty, but it is what provides the newspapers to the St. Ambrose campus every day.
The Collegiate Readership Program offers newspapers to college campuses nationwide. The program was started at Pennsylvania State University in 1997 and has spread to various colleges around the country over the years. It is organized by USA Today and it offers a college's choice of a local and regional paper along with USA Today.
The program at St. Ambrose began in the 2001-2002 school year. A representative from USA Today came to campus and worked with the Student Government Association and Student Activities to help create a pilot program.
"We did the pilot for maybe a month or so and that helped us determine our consumption rate," Veronica Riepe, Director of Student Activities, said. "We looked at how many people were picking up papers and therefore how many papers we would need if we launched a program."
The pilot program, funded by SGA, showed a high enough consumption rate on campus that a full program was instituted the following school year. The newspapers included USA Today, The Chicago Tribune (later switched to The New York Times), and the Quad City Times.
The first year of the full program was not funded by the university but mainly by SGA. USA Today said that $18,000 was what SAU needed for a full program, but the money was not available at the time.
"We were out of our budget cycle," Riepe said. "You request new money in the fall of the year and it is approved in July or August. It was April, so there was no way we were going to get money for another year but students really liked it so we decided to launch a program with $6,500 and we kind of borrowed money from places. SGA, CAB and Student Activities contributed so at least we could run the program."
This limited first year was highly dependent on students sharing newspapers but the program was up and running. The university granted full funding for the program the following year and the program is currently running on a $15,000 budget. The money is taken out of the tuition that students pay each year.
"We don't have a fee structure per se," Riepe said. "You've got millions of dollars in this pot of which we just get $15,000 of it."
The program is currently run through Student Activities but is easy to manage. There is only one carrier that comes to campus each morning and they deliver all 3 papers to each dorm. SAU also has a USA Today contact to call if problems arise and that contact calls the representative in Davenport to fix the issues.
There are many benefits to this program not only for students but for teachers as well.
"I like having newspapers available so students can see what is going on in the world locally, nationally and internationally," John Simmons, business professor, said. Simmons, like many other professors, uses the newspapers as a resource for the students in his classes.
There are also many unseen benefits that the program provides. The program provides the racks and the recycling bins next to the newspapers for free and they empty the recycling bins each morning. Also, when the newspapers are delivered, unused papers from the previous day are collected and counted and money is credited back to SAU for every paper left on the rack. This credit has allowed SAU to create an additional program that provides newspapers to people living on campus in the summer.
"The beauty of the program is that we don't pay for anything we're not using, and so even if we don't spend all $15,000 then that money just goes back to the university. It's not like it goes to waste," Riepe said.
"I have the students pick out an article. We have about 2-3 students each week. On Monday we would talk about the articles in class and on the days that the students didn't do it I would do it." ?
"The other thing that makes us a little unique and always has is of the three papers half of the papers are QC Times. We have a really high local paper consumption rate."
"It was then up to SGA to say 'hey we really want to do this. Where are we going to find this money to launch this program?' and we really didn't want to skip a whole year that was our trip, but we were out of the budget cycle so we have to find this money somewhere. It was SGA that really backed it and put their money where their mouth was and said 'ok we'll fund this part if we can get other people or other departments in the university to help us."'
"They deemed it to be a good use of their funds and something that impacted potentially the entire student body and thought that was a good use of their money."
"USA Today gets our calendar and then they just take care of it. I don't have to tell them anything."
"Unless we look at the numbers and if we are always running out of newspapers in a certain building then we will adjust allocation and we would up it."
"Just read something. There is a whole world out there."
It fits well with the educational mission of the institution and its convenient; its right there.
Not a lot of things run this smoothly at this magnitude.
"We did a survey and kind of talked to students at first. The Quad City Times was a likely candidate because it was the best local paper. We needed to pick USA Today because they were running the program. Then we wanted another regional paper so we discussed The St. Louis Dispatch and The Des Moines Register, but the Chicago Tribune was a likely candidate because a lot of students came from there," Riepe said.