Give Us the Times

Last year, The Crimson briefly faced some extra competition. Thanks to a pilot project sponsored by the Undergraduate Council (UC), several copies of The New York Times were delivered to each dining hall every morning, allowing students to read America’s paper of record as they grabbed a bite on the way to class. These few newspapers pierced the proverbial “Harvard bubble” and sparked plenty of breakfast table discussions of issues of national and global concern. And undergraduates responded: the UC received more than 350 notes from students who enjoyed being able to read the Times. Each copy of the Times was surely worth the mere cents it cost to get them into dining halls.

Last year, however, the UC voted against continuing the program. Thankfully, it seems to have reevaluated the situation: on Sunday it voted overwhelmingly to try a new pilot program. This time, however, we hope The New York Times will become a fixture in the dining hall instead of a few-week treat.

At the cost of only 40 cents per paper, discounted from the newsstand price of $1.25 per paper, the program offers considerable benefits at a very low cost. The UC legislation that passed Sunday night—which was co-sponsored by the President of The Crimson, who was not involved in the writing of this editorial—stipulates that the Times will cover $0.20 per paper, half the cost, and Harvard University Dining Services will cover $0.10. In the houses, House Committees (HoCos) and the UC will each cover $0.05. In Annenberg, the UC will cover $0.10 per paper.

The UC legislation states that during the six-week pilot period, the UC will explore other long-term funding options for the delivery of the Times. Unfortunately this is a necessity. As much as we would like to see the UC be able to fund this project in perpetuity, doing so is unfeasible for several reasons. First, the Times will only pay its half of the cost for a limited time, and come 2008 it is raising the cost of its educational subscriptions by five cents. Consequently, the price will swell well beyond what the UC could afford without cutting significantly into the portion of its budget devoted to student groups.

If the program is to be viable in the long term, then, it must be funded by the administration. This would bring Harvard in line with many of its peers; for instance, Brown, Cornell, Dartmouth, and Yale currently subsidize free newspaper programs for students.

The only possible objection to the program that we see is the Times’ recent decision to make almost all of its content free online. But newspapers in dining halls offer students something that an online newspaper cannot—a physical presence that can promote debate and discussion far more effectively than the somewhat isolating experience of reading the paper on a screen. It also allows students to browse and chance on stories they may have not seen otherwise in a way that the Web precludes.

Students already read campus news on a regular basis in the dining hall; they should have similar access to the national news. We hope the administration will realize the boon such an initiative will prove for intellectual life on campus and foot the bill with enthusiasm.