As a part of the New York Times Readership Program, 300 digital subscriptions to The New York Times are now available to Binghamton University students.

“The deal that we have right now is that we have one digital copy for every physical copy that we buy,” said Aaron Ricks, Student Association vice president for academic affairs. “The best way to access it is to go to www.nytimes.com/passes, and from their you can log in with your Binghamton email address.”

At any one time, 300 students can be logged in, and students will have 24 hours of access after they log in, according to Ricks.

Ricks said that the total cost of the New York Times program is about $20,000 per year, and he is looking into means to keep the program on campus moving forward.

“Right now we are looking to the future,” Ricks said. “We are looking at different avenues for keeping funding for next semester, but that’s dependent on working on it with the administration and maybe attaching it to some type of fee so it’s independently funded and I don’t have to request funding from various bodies.”

He added that the program still has room to grow.

“We are looking at trying to make a more stable funding sources so that we are able to expand the program to include other publications in the future,” Ricks said. “If we wanted we could buy more digital subscriptions by themselves.”

Aaron Feinberg, an undeclared freshman, said he was excited to hear that digital subscriptions will now be available.

“I think it will be especially useful in the winter when the weather is bad and I don’t want to go all the way to the dining hall to get a hard copy,” Feinberg said. “I only started reading The New York Times when I got to Binghamton because it was easily available, and this just makes it even more easily available.”

Ricks is also in the process of bringing a guest speaker to campus, which is included in the program cost.

“We are working on getting a big time New York Times journalist to come to campus,” Ricks said. “I can’t tell you who it is right now, but we have a speaker slated for mid-April and I am working with The New York Times right now to pin point the exact date. We are just back and forth right now making sure that the writer we are trying to get is free and available at the right times.”

Josh Krinsky, an undeclared freshman, said he was impressed that Binghamton might bring a New York Times journalist to campus.

“I’m from New York City where reading the Times is sort of a requirement, so it’s pretty cool that they would bring a Times journalist to give a lecture,” Krinsky said. “I started reading the Times in ninth grade when my history teacher required it and now I read it everyday, but listening to someone who writes for it will be nice and fresh.”