Students who became accustomed to getting The New York Times in classes last year are probably wondering where their copies are this year.

But the delivery of the newspaper has fallen victim to budget cuts, leaving students without the daily newspaper.

Last year, nearly 1,000 copies of the newspaper were delivered to UTM daily through a redership program sponsored by the American Democracy Project (ADP) and funded by the Division of Academic Affairs.

“It’s even more cloudy than it may seem. We’re still trying to pursue funding. It may even be here this fall,” said Mike McCullough, professor of management and UTM’s ADP chair.

At 35 cents a paper, plus $100 a week for delivery, Academic Affairs paid about $1,000 a semester for the NYT last year, McCullough said.

This year there is a greater demand for the NYT to be used in classes ranging from history, English, sociology to political science and even chemistry.

“[The ADP] budget is just about eaten up by [The New York Times]. I’m going to appeal to others on campus to share funding,” McCullough said.

McCullough said that it may be too late to get the NYT back this semester, but that he was still working on getting it to the 17 faculty who use it for their class.

“We’d like for it to at least be out by next semester,” McCullough said, adding he hoped to broaden the program by getting more faculty to incorporate the NYT into their class.

Rebel Reavis, a sociology professor, incorporated the daily newspaper into her social problems class last semester. But this year, students have get their articles from Internet sources.

“It was extremely useful because students could find articles pertaining to pretty much anything we covered in class,” Reavis said. “Also, while students looked for articles on particular social topics, they could come across lots of other useful information.” McCullough also stressed the significance of the NYT, as compared to other news sources.

“There’s only a few sources where news comes from and The New York Times is one of them. Everyone else picks up the crumbs that fall from the table of The New York Times. My deep apologies for it not being out ... I’m just as sad as anyone on campus about this.” McCullough said.

McCullough will speak with university deans and department chairs tomorrow to discuss possible shared funding of the project.

The American Democracy Project is a multi-campus initiative of the American Association of State Colleges and Universities intended to increase civic engagement on college campuses and among students. UTM signed on to the ADP in 2003 and became the executive center for the Southern Consortium of the ADP in 2005.