The Organizational Review Committee's recommendation that newspapers be eliminated from University dining halls will not be enacted, Richard Bova, senior associate dean of residential and dining services, wrote in an e-mail to The Herald.
The ORC, which was charged with reducing expenditures by $14 million in order to stem the drain from the University's endowment, recommended eliminating a program that provided the New York Times and the Providence Journal to students for $33,000 per year, according to the report the committee released on Feb. 2.
Originally a program initiated by the Undergraduate Council of Students, the newspaperservice is currently funded through the Dining Services budget. If the program were to continue, the ORC's report recommended, it should "return to being funded by UCS and the student activities fee."
"During the ORC process, one of the guiding principles was to seek savings that wouldn't hurt the student experience," said Marisa Quinn, vice president of public affairs and University relations.
President Ruth Simmons will present a set of recommendations from those proposed by the ORC and the University Resources Committee to the Corporation later this month.
However, Simmons and others "recommended that this should be reconsidered," Quinn said, because the proposed cut would result in "minimal savings compared with other actions."
"There is a real value for the community in having newspapers available to students," Quinn said.
As a result, it is "unlikely that it is something that will be forwarded" by Simmons to the Corporation, said Quinn of the proposal.
"The ORC recommendations that were posted on the Brown website are just that: recommendations," UCS President Clay Wertheimer '10 wrote in an e-mail to The Herald.
"They were submitted to President Simmons ... One item that she is NOT recommending is removing newspapers from the dining halls."
— With additional reporting by Zung Nguyen Vu
