The three parties currently running for Student Senate clearly have a lot of issues they want to focus on if elected, but while there are several ideas floating around for future senate initiatives, I hope that all three tickets will consider reforming and expanding one initiative already put in place: the Bobcat Readership Program.
The Readership Program is probably the most impressive initiative to come out of Student Senate in the four years I’ve attended Ohio University, but it still has some problems. The most prominent issue that I can see is that even though there are always plenty of copies of USA Today and The New York Times, copies of The Columbus Dispatch are often hard to come by. As a Baker Center employee, I have frequently worked morning shifts during which I see the stacks of The New York Times and USA Today’s overflowing from the newsstands, while the Dispatch is represented by maybe 20 newspapers. These 20 copies are usually gobbled up by faculty, staff and students with early classes before the bulk of the student body has a chance to grab one. I suspect the situation is the same at the other Readership distribution points.
I hope that whomever is elected to Student Senate this year will explore the possibility of ordering more copies of the Dispatch to match the number of The New York Times and USA Today. The Readership Program offers OU students a great opportunity to consume national news, but news from the state capital shouldn’t be so hard to come by. Hopefully the new senate can also take steps to expand the program to include The Plain Dealer and perhaps even major papers from Kentucky and West Virginia.
New initiatives are great, but senate should always take the opportunity to make a good thing better.
Jesse Bethea is a senior studying video production and the associate editor of The New Political.
This article originally ran in print under the headline "Next senate should improve readership program"
