ABOUT THIS SERIES: This is second in a five-part series looking at how the University takes in money and what it spends once it gets it. Today we look at the newspaper readership program and where that money goes. Wednesday we’ll report on Tate II funding. Find documents and the whole series on redandblack.com.

The Collegiate Readership Program – the boxes where you find a New York Times on campus in the morning – may see some big changes in the near future.

The program, which you pay $5 for in student fees each year, pulled in a $16,000 surplus last year, and officials are trying to figure out what to do with the money.

“Do we need to add more locations, or maybe increase awareness of an under utilized service?” said Ed Mirecki, director of the program and adviser to the Student Government Association, which originally implemented the program. “That’s the wild card question. What Changes need to be made? Do we reduce the amount one year to only charging $1 per semester, or not charge at all?”

“The program was created by a referendum, so do we need another referendum to change the charges?”

After losing the Atlanta Journal-Constitution – the second-highest selling paper in the program following the New York Times – Mirecki said he’s waiting to see where the program goes this year. Extra money from each year goes into a rollover fund for the program.

“The surplus question is uncharted territory. Students shouldn’t be paying more than they need for a service,” he said. “If we continue to collect more than we need this year, it’s definitely a question we need to face. We’re not trying to let this fund build up.”

The University doesn’t pay for the newspapers left in the bins, as USA Today only charges for the ones that are picked up. The original contract for the 2008-2009 school year allowed for $121,652 to be spent on the program, but the final cost of total papers sold was $105,045 – accounting for the extra $16,000. About $1,000 was spent on brochures to inform incoming students about the program.

“SGA has to keep letting first-year students know they can use and, in fact, pay for these newspapers,” Mirecki said.

If awareness and demand remain low, Mirecki said he may question the usefulness of the program on campus.

Though the Collegiate Readership Program has quickly become a staple on campus, a few other kinks are still being worked out. While faculty and staff IDs work on the bins, a few bins across campus are broken, and still others aren’t placed in the path of best distribution.

These are problems that “in the long-term, we want to fix,” Mirecki said.

Jamie Pepper and Matt Suber, SGA president and vice president for the 2006-2007 school year, started the initiative, but Mirecki took charge as administrations changed.

“Once [the program] got here, there’s less involvement and not a big campaign to raise money. I get the calls if bins aren’t operating,” Mirecki said. “I think it’s something we should revisit with SGA and survey people again. If we know where students want to use the boxes, the more the merrier.”

USA Today, which runs the readership program, works with the University to contract a certain amount of papers for the campus each day, Monday through Friday. This fall, the campus receives 481 Athens Banner-Herald, 715 USA Today and 706 New York Times each day.

Last week, The Red & Black checked all the bins early in the morning and late at night for several days to find trends in usage.

At night, a surprisingly high number of USA Today papers were leftover, and more than half of the bins were repeatedly sold out of Athens Banner-Herald papers.

One reason: staff members.

At 6:25 a.m. Wednesday – a time when little, if any, students are on campus – two staff members opened the broken bin at the Tate Student Center Plaza and grabbed papers before heading into their jobs at the Tate Cafe.

At 6:45 a.m., a staff member from the Lamar Dodd School of Art grabbed a handful of each paper from the Main Library bin.

“I come up here and pull out about 12 papers every day for people back down there,” said Eddie Freeman. “I don’t want to steal from up here, but we don’t have a box.”

As he held down the door to count out papers, three Athens Transit and Campus Transit drivers walked up and took Banner-Heralds before boarding their buses.

The main source of blame for the ongoing problems: technology.

“We’ve had to keep the boxes simple,” Mirecki said. “They’re outdoors and used daily. The card reader is as simple as it can get.”

Some boxes run on electricity and others on solar power, but the ones that run on batteries wear out often, and USA Today representatives come to Athens to replace them. The card reader simply checks a magnetic strip on each card.

“If you have an active card, it works,” Mirecki said. “We’ve had ongoing discussions with Bulldog Bucks about adding a code because this program is absolutely intended for students.”

Mirecki said he’s heard stories of professors or deans taking newspapers for personal use, which “isn’t appropriate.”

“But it’s established as an educational resource,” he said. “If a professor brings them into the classroom for discussion and encourages students, that’s the exact idea and goes to the core mission of the program.”

And the “open air” wire racks in the residence halls that don’t require IDs are provided for convenience.

“Really the only people who have access to those are the students,” Mirecki said. “Someone is less likely to walk off the street and take those.”

The Red & Black also found although the bins are contracted for a certain number of papers each day, some are stocked with higher or lower numbers than the contracted amount.

For example, the Instructional Plaza, scheduled to receive 40 New York Times, 22 Athens Banner-Herald and 37 USA Today papers, tends to receive 45 NYT and 25 ABH each day.

“We monitor the sales and adjust the draw we have,” said John May, USA Today representative from Norcross who manages the University’s program. “In the contract, we have a certain amount of money we can spend that the University has budgeted.”

“Although we’ve scheduled how many papers go to each box, we balance it for what box gets papers,” he said. “In the newspaper business, we cut it as close as possible and try not to miss sales elsewhere.”

And if students want more bins on campus?

“Absolutely,” May said. “If the demand is there, USA Today is always willing to install more boxes.”