Watching cable television is like eating Oreo cookies once you start, you can never stop. Just as that delicious bag of chocolate cookie and cream filing stashed out of sight behind my cans of green beans and boxes of minute rice lures me to the cupboard at 3 a.m. and threatens to expand my waistband on yet another collegiate binge-fest, cable television is a constant temptation.
When I was younger, there was a certain force that kept me from glutting myself with mind-numbing television and Oreos: my parents. In grade school, my mother promptly switched the television off at 6 p.m.; ‘Jem’ and ‘Thundercats’ were replaced with phonics and math homework. And later, my father instituted his ingeniously democratic rule for Spellman family television and movie consumption. If his junior high schoolers wanted to see a PG-13 or R-rated movie, they would have to read the book first (and then wait for a weekend when my mother went out of town).
In college, however, TV time is all the time. There are no parents to exercise their authority with a wave of the remote control. I can tune into ‘Everwood,’ ‘The Bachelor,’ ‘CSI’ and HBO’s ‘Real Sex,’ catch episodes of ‘Charmed’ at 6 p.m. and 11 p.m. and bite my nails through four harrowing episodes of decorating near-disaster on TLC’s ‘Trading Spaces’ all in one day.
Students at Boston University have loudly complained that cable television is not offered in university housing. The newly elected Student Union Executive Board has seized upon this discontent and begun its reign by vowing to provide all students with cable by next semester. They maintain BU students deserve educational television, and the lack of cable is an impediment to a well-rounded university degree.
But what denotes ‘educational’ cable television? At a school as diverse as BU, where would administrators draw the proverbial line and cut the cable access? If students in the College of Communication deserve CNN, don’t students in the School of Hospitality deserve to kick their education up a notch with ‘Emeril Live?’ If history majors deserve The History Channel, don’t acting majors at the College of Fine Arts deserve to watch Academy Award winning performances on HBO instead of settling for ‘Must See TV’ on NBC? If College of General Studies kids deserve Nickelodeon, doesn’t the basketball team deserve ‘SportsCenter’ to see how winners in the NCAA play?
Despite the obvious merits and brain-numbing detriments of cable television on campus, there is also the question of whether ‘True 2’ will be ‘true’ to its word. Promising cable will be installed by September is a lofty, if not impossible, goal. In the past, it has taken years of empty promises, frustration and hard work to change policies. The Student Union should promise us they’ll update their website and create 24-hour study lounges not promise that by September, BU students will happily clicking through ‘Baywatch’ reruns.
Moreover, even if the chancellor’s icy heart were to melt into a television-shaped puddle tomorrow, the logistics of affording cable television for a university the size of BU are hard to imagine. BU is spread over two cities and different cable companies. Additionally, with basic cable running upward of $40 per month, the expense would be immense. And as an off-campus student who has learned to survive for weeks on end on nothing but Columbo yogurt and cereal bars, I understand the $90 monthly burden of a premium cable package. Most colleges in Boston don’t offer cable for these financial and practical reasons.
BU students are already paying an extra $100 in ethernet costs next year. Would students and parents be willing to pay an additional $300 for cable? Would it be an optional service? And most importantly, how would a university such as BU, with its library in such a pitiful state of disarray and its freshmen stuffed in overcrowded, abysmal housing, justify providing its students with cable television?
As much as we all wonder whether Brenda and Nate will get back together on ‘Six Feet Under’ and enjoy the ease of accessing 24-hour news with the click of a remote, cable TV should not be the first item on the Student Union Executive Board’s agenda. Yes, it is sad that a university with one of the world’s best communication schools does not have a television station available to the university community. But what is even sadder is that the Student Union E-board is using that fact to seduce the entire campus into believing cable television is an unalienable, god-given, constitutional, necessary-for-life right.
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