USA Today provides free newspapers

West Chester University has been chosen to be the site of an ongoing program that seeks to provide students with free daily access to several local and national newspapers.USA Today manages the Collegiate Readership Program, which has gained notable success since its introduction in 1997 on the Penn State University Campus, according to the USA Today Web site.

Since that time, this small idea has spread to nearly 200 campuses nationwide. The WCU campus will be surveyed in March in order to measure student responses and approvalratings in relation to the increased access to newspapers. If enough interest is shown, the papers will continue to be delivered to campus every weekday morning when classes are in session.

The free papers that are available for West Chester students are as follows: The New York Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer and USA Today. Each of these newspapers is kept in large white boxes that have "Student Newspaper Readership Program" printed on either side.

These boxes are located in Sykes Student Union, Main Hall, Anderson, Schmucker Science Center, the E. O. Bull Center, and the Francis Harvey Green Library. To access the papers, students simply have to go to any of these locations and take a paper from the designated boxes. USA Today is in charge of recycling unused papers and refilling the bins on a daily basis.

By implementing this program, USA Today hopes to encourage college students to seek out more knowledge concerning local, national and international events. Daily newspaper access can result in a heightened awareness of the world in addition to an increased level of critical thinking.

The average college student does not regularly seek out or read a newspaper of any kind. A few decades ago, 50 percent of collegeaged people read a paper on a daily basis. In a recent survey, that number has dropped to a mere 20 percent according to David Mindich, author of "Tuned Out: Why Americans Under 40 Don?t Pay Attention to the News." Another survey, conducted by USA Today, found that 54 percent of college students said that their readership of newspapers has declined since coming to college.

If students respond positively to the Collegiate Readership Program, free newspapers will be available for not only a month, but in upcoming semesters as well. Response levels will be measured through the number of papers taken each day. Many teachers and students can benefit from the increased awareness that daily newspapers can provide for their readers.

Dr. Edward Lordan, a professor of communication studies at West Chester, had this to say about the free newspaper access: "I was totally thrilled to hear about this program. It?s hard to think of anything more important in a college student?s education than coming to understand how the world works - and newspapers help us all do that. In the communication studies department, we frequently use the newspaper as an instructional tool, and the fact that three major papers will now be available to all of our students for free should add to the intellectual discourse on campus.

Now, we just need students to take advantage of this great program." Junior kinesiology major Staci German agrees that the free newspapers are a positive change for the campus. She said, "I have walked by the newspaper bins a few times, and many of them are empty, so people must be responding. I know that most students won?t go out and buy a newspaper on their own, but the fact that the papers are free makes it a lot easier to stay informed. More students are likely to keep track of current events if they don?t have to pay for the cost of a paper.