The New York Times stands will no longer be on campus. USG plans on using their money on other streaming services for UConn students. File Photo/The Daily Campus
This fall semester is the first in several years that the University of Connecticut Undergraduate Student Government has decided not to provide the student body with free daily subscriptions to The New York Times.
In the past, USG newsstands carried The New York Times at the entrance of the Homer Babbidge Library, as well as any dining hall on campus. Students even had full access to the paper digitally at no extra cost.
This year, the newsstands have not been filled with The New York Times, and student subscriptions to the paper has just recently expired as of Sept. 18.
Due to complications last spring with the university’s representative to The New York Times and unclear levels of general student interest in the paper, the student government could not confidently invest in another year of free subscriptions for students.
“We want to be sure we are spending our money in the best way possible,” USG President Priyanka Thakkar said.
Moving forward, Thakkar says she is looking ways to gauge student interest in different types of media platforms. Spotify and Hulu are among the music and streaming services that USG is considering to offering to students in the future — in place of the former New York Times subscriptions.
Still, USG’s complete access to The New York Times is not the only opportunity for students to get off-campus news. This year, the UConn Bookstore has offered students access to The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal.
In a Sept. 6 email, the UConn bookstore, in partnership with The New York Times, set the weekly price of an online subscription at $1.
Len Oser, the general manager of the bookstore, explained that this deal is nothing new. The UConn Bookstore has always offered students digital access to The New York Times at this cost, and they have never coordinated with the USG’s readership program.
Students who take advantage of the UConn Bookstore’s email offer have full online access to the Pulitzer Prize winning newspaper, with the first four weeks for free.
Conner Caridad is a campus correspondent for The Daily Campus. He can be reached via email at conner.caridad@uconn.edu
