History Channel or Cartoon Network?
C-SPAN2 or MTV?
Associated Student Government senators tonight will vote on a bill calling for cable in dorm rooms and choose between 14 and 16 cable channels from 52 options. Their decision will be influenced by student input gathered from e-mails and an online poll that is scheduled to begin at noon today.
ASG Technology Director Prashant Velagaleti said Tuesday night he hoped to have an online poll running by noon today. When the poll goes up, it will be linked to the HereAndNow Web site.
The online poll failed to materialize on Monday or Tuesday due to technical difficulties, Velagaleti said.
“I got about an hour and a half of sleep (between) working on the poll,” said Velagaleti, a McCormick senior. “This was very short notice for us. (Information Technology) was very cooperative. It certainly wasn’t their fault that the poll wasn’t set up today.”
Velagaleti, who is president of Residential College Board, said RCB and the Residence Hall Association will use results from the polls as part of their recommendations to administrators, he said.
Besides stating channel preferences in the poll, students can decide whether they want to pay $121.20 each year to fund the necessary software, hardware and programming, as well as ongoing IT support.
So far, many students have replied to e-mails asking for input, although they gave predictable responses, said Shepard Residential College Sen. Jordan Cerf.
“We sent an e-mail out detailing the cable proposal, and this is definitely the biggest response we’ve ever had,” said Cerf, a Speech freshman. “MTV had a big draw and all the guys wanted ESPN. One guy rattled all these off: He wanted ESPN, ESPN 2, ESPN Classic. … It’s ridiculous, really.”
Capital and programming costs for the project come to about $550,000, which students will pay back to the university over the course of five years, Vice President for Student Affairs William Banis said.
“We’ll stretch it out over five years,” Banis said. “We hope the equipment lasts that long.”
According to their Web sites, Yale University and University of Virginia provide traditional cable television on campus at no cost. Other universities charge a fee for each dorm room, to be split between roommates. University of Michigan, for example, provides eight local channels for free and expanded programming at a cost of $196 per year for each room.
Locally, AT&T charges Evanston residents $33.99 per month for basic cable and $42.99 per month for basic digital cable. More expensive packages offer more channels.
Although she is pleased student pleas for cable in dorm rooms may finally be answered, Weinberg sophomore Jaime Huling said the proposed delivery through Ethernet connections instead of televisions is not ideal.
“You can share a television among many people,” Huling said. “But you can’t all crowd around a laptop. It really limits your options in how you can use it.”
Students who need to watch a program for class cannot take notes on their computer at the same time, nor can they write a paper and watch television simultaneously, Huling said.
If the project progresses, Banis said cable testing would be carried out in several dorms after Spring Break.
“We would be the first school, according to IT, to adopt this new technology,” Banis said. “I’m sure there will be some bumps in the road, but if students tell us in the next few weeks they want cable, we will do some limited testing of the service.”
