A Collegian story reporting that the Associated Students, Inc. (ASI) senate rejected a proposal for students to receive New York Times subscriptions at no individual cost is receiving national attention, including from the New York Post and local media like The Fresno Bee.

The proposal, with a pricetag for ASI of $15,705, would have cost about 67 cents per student, allowing students to avoid The Times’ paywall. Normally, all-access digital Times subscribers would pay about $30 every four weeks, totaling about $200 per year. 

Similar to services like the Student Recreation Center, students do pay for its cost through fees, but can otherwise freely use the facility afterward. 

In a New York Post article titled “Woke California college students turn down free New York Times subscriptions because it isn’t left-wing enough,” ASI is referred to as the “lefty student government.”

The Post story did not include the fact that the subscription would have cost ASI nearly $16,000, and it incorrectly attributed several quotes from senators.

Several ASI senators responded to this media attention to The Collegian via email, including a Letter to the Editor submission from Cody Jarvis, ASI senator for research and innovations.

In the letter, Jarvis argues that ASI was correct to reject the proposal and that The Collegian’s headline was misleading, due to the use of the word “free.”

“ASI’s budget relies solely on student fees and, as a result, on strong student enrollment, in these tough social and economic times we must practice fiscal conservatism with our budget,” Jarvis wrote in the letter. “That includes preventing the waste of student fees, and yes, that includes funding a New York Times subscription.”

Jarvis also pointed to data that he mentioned in the Feb. 18 meeting that reveals ASI had a brief subscription deal with The Times before, for one year in 2018.

“It was cut during difficult budget years due to low usage among Fresno State students,” Jarvis wrote in the letter. “Todd Halvorsen from The New York Times was very unprepared and, when asked a question, often would deflect or say he did not have the data.”

Halvorsen, who presented the proposal along with Senator for the College of Arts and Humanities Sarah Sevy, briefly discussed this in the meeting.

“If I recall, that was a collaboration of certain deans that had contributed to a student-only program where they had included faculty and ASI, and there was something with a budget situation where the deans had to cut their budget, so they had to cut the program,” Halvorsen said.

Halvorsen said he believes cutting the program had to do with enrollment.

In her response to Collegian questions regarding the matter, Sevy said she is still in favor of the subscriptions.

“I stand by this proposal on its merits,” Sevy said. “At approximately $0.67 per student, it would have provided access to one of the most widely used news and research platforms in higher education — including paywalled articles assigned by professors, archival research tools, and features students already use and value.” 

Sevy also said that, according to the informal feedback that she gathered, students were enthusiastic about being able to access this kind of subscription with The Times.

“The students I spoke with did not see this as an ideological question,” Sevy said. “They saw it as a practical one. That is the interest I was representing.”

She also acknowledged the concerns raised by senators, such as Alya Hassan, senator for the College of Health and Human Services. In the meeting, Hassan said part of her reservations about the proposal was that The Times avoids using words like genocide, ethnic cleansing and occupied territory.

Sevy said she encourages topic discourse such as this, but this idea holds The Times to an unrealistic standard.

“The concerns cited represent a small fraction of the thousands of articles the Times publishes,” Sevy said. “Applying an impossibly high bar to one outlet, while the very outlets now covering this story carry their own significant ethical histories, is not a journalism standard. It is an unworkable one.”

She also provided a list of major news outlets and cited their own controversies, including The Post, The Bee, The Wall Street Journal, Fox News and CNN.

“There is no major news organization operating at scale that has not faced significantethical scrutiny,” Sevy said. “The question was never whether The Times is perfect. No outlet is. The question was whether its value to students outweighs its imperfections — and on that count, the answer is clearly yes.”

Sevy concluded her statement by clarifying that she did not speak to The Bee prior to its story coming out, and that the ASI senate simply exercised its “oversight role.”

“That is not ‘woke’ politics,” Sevy said, referring to verbiage used by The Post. “That is governance.”

She also said multiple senators suggested that she should revisit the proposal after conducting broader student polling, which she welcomes “wholeheartedly.”

In a statement, ASI President Camalah Saleh said that ASI is a non-partisan student organization that does not endorse political parties or partisan agendas.

“Our role is to represent students and utilize student fees responsibly,” Saleh said. “Disagreements over budget decisions do not make ASI a partisan organization or justify reporting that does.”

Saleh also said outside media attention does not influence ASI decision-making.

“The total cost of the proposal was approximately $16,000, and the senate decided it was not an appropriate spending at this time,” Saleh said. “The vote was decisive and had discussion surrounding it. Media characterizations do not change the vote.”

The two other ASI members that The Collegian reached out to, Hassan and Sydney Pierce, senator for the Jordan College of Ag Sciences and Tech, did not respond.