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Students on the Hill should vote against the huge media corporations that are asking UCLA to subsidize their efforts to expand readership and increase advertising revenue.

After being rejected by students two years ago, the newspaper readership program is back: Through an online ballot next week, dormitory residents will decide whether to add $9 annually to their housing fees in return for copies of USA Today and The New York Times being placed throughout their living space. It seems fair enough: Pay a little and get newspapers in return. But the reality of the situation is more complex.

Papers like USA Today and The New York Times are able to claim thousands more readers when they set advertising rates, based on the increased circulation they get from readership programs across the country. The question is this: Why should students already facing increases in student fees and housing costs subsidize the business efforts of corporations that should compete for student business like anyone else?

If USA Today and The New York Times want to, let them target individual students as they look to improve their readership and revenue. Let them compete with each other and with the Los Angeles Times, which sells subscriptions on this campus. But don’t let them enter the market this way, with a vote that will require every student on the Hill to pay even if the student isn’t reading the paper.

If students approve the program, they eventually will forget the fee is built into their housing fees. Students will eventually perceive the papers as “free” – even though they’re still paying for them as part of an itemized list on their housing bill. This is why the program’s proponents have returned to campus two years after they tried to gather support the first time: They’re depending on students’ short-term memory, and they’re depending on students two years from now not even to know the difference.

Even for students who favor the program, the number of papers on the stands would be smaller than the number of people living in the dorms – those paying for individual copies. Is that fair? The corporations backing this initiative aren’t altruistic. They’re hoping students will stick around as customers, subscribing at regular rates after they move out of the dorms.

Student media programs across the country are seriously concerned with the unrelenting attempts of national corporations to establish these footholds in university communities. Kathy Lawrence, the College Media Association president and director of student media at the University of Texas, Austin, wrote about these programs in a recent newsletter: “Go to just about any gathering of college newspaper advisers and mention the phrase College Readership Program, and you’ll hear a collective groan, not from every corner of the room, perhaps, but certainly in most of the room.”

Student media outlets are wary of competing with professional papers, especially as many student media publications are not subsidized by student fees – as the professional papers would be. Student newspapers worry about declining readership and dropping advertising revenue because national advertisers might see less value in advertising with college papers.

And that should worry the campus at large. Despite their many flaws, campus newspapers are invaluable and unique resources to readers. The Daily Bruin, for example, covers UCLA’s small sports teams while other Los Angeles newspapers don’t. Readers rarely can learn of an on-campus concert or lecture from the Los Angeles Times, but The Bruin covers such events regularly. With gargantuan budgets, USA Today and The New York Times can scour the globe for stories, but they don’t hold together university communities like campus newspapers. They just can’t capture the campus Zeitgeist.

There are dozens of reasons to reject this initiative. Students who won’t read the papers to begin with should vote against it, as should students who believe in the educational value of student media. Students who believe these newspapers should compete for the coed market should vote against it because the readership program discourages competition. And students who believe their student fees should go to necessary services instead of extras should vote against it.

Students stand to be taken advantage of. The media corporations behind this effort aren’t doing them a favor by offering their papers at a low cost per person. They’re trying to increase their own profits, at students’ expense, and each of those apparently “low-cost” papers is implicated in this effort.