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Written by: Brian Lofrumento
The results are in: students want the Newspaper Readership Program back. Last week the Student Government Association (SGA) sent out a survey to students to get feedback about the controversial decision to cut the paper program, and the results overwhelmingly called for the program to be brought back. The survey results have only added momentum to SGA’s continuing efforts to reinstate the program.
Over 80 percent of the survey respondents indicated that reading from the Newspaper Readership Program contributed to their classroom studies, suggesting that the program is not just a luxury that Bentley can afford to throw away. Instead, students indicated – and SGA supports the fact – that it enhances students’ learning experiences. As a result, SGA is fighting to get the program reinstated, but this time under different circumstances.
“We’ve recommended that the program comes out of the academic operating budget,” said SGA senator Eric Kronlund. “We feel that’s the most appropriate place for this service to come from as we feel it is academic in nature and it does add to the learning experience here. At a business institution we need business news.”
As successful as the previous program was, it was cut from the student life budget due to increasing costs faced in other areas of the budget. Controversially, the decision to cut the program was made without any student involvement – even SGA was not invited to discuss the cutback.
“I think when they cut it they didn’t realize the value of it to students, but hopefully SGA has done enough work to shed light on that,” said SGA President Puja Shah.
Getting the program back, though, ranks high on SGA’s list of priorities.
“We’ve committed our time to this,” continued Shah. “We meet almost weekly and we’ve met with representatives from USA Today three or four times now. We’ve put a lot of work into this this year because we know the readership program is important to students.”
The survey asked students what they would like to see cut in order to bring back the Newspaper Readership Program. The results raised a number of common themes.
In particular, students that responded to the survey commonly referenced the space capsule-like phone booths found in the library as something they’d rather see cut over the Readership Program. Other areas that students said they’d like to see cutback to fund the new Readership Program are the student activity fee, library databases, trading room, and giveaways.
While SGA continues to work hard to get the program back, so far administrators have not been as supportive as students would like. SGA formally submitted their new proposal to the Executive Director of Academic Technology, the Library, and Online Learning, Phillip Knutel, but are yet to hear back.
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