With the recent redesign of the dorms’ dining halls, students at Hillside, Parkside and Beachside Colleges seem content with the better buffets, but one inconsistency has sparked a few student inquiries.
Rooms in the on campus dorms, Hillside and Parkside, come equipped with more than 40 premium channels, ranging from the Food Network to AMC. But Beachside, the off-campus residential housing, has little more than 20 basic channels, with only a few major networks such as MSNBC and CBS.
Some residents would argue that Beachside’s shiny hardwood floors and mirrored closets compensate for the lack of cable, but other students say there should be equal packaging.
“[It’s] not fair that the cable systems aren’t the same,” Kira Egan, a senior sociology major, said.
Egan, who has been living in Hillside for two years, said other students have also commented on the inconsistency of the cable system.
“It’s inconvenient, and [the channels] should be the same,” engineering student Carson Abbott, a Beachside Resident Assistant, said. “It makes it logical for it to be uniform throughout each hall.”
Instead of being able to watch their preferred channels in their rooms, Beachside residents have to make due with the only channel-packed TV, which sits in Beachside’s multi purpose room and works on a first-come, first-served basis.
Carson said only the multi purpose room’s television has access to more than 40 channels. He said students cannot hold an impromptu movie night or routinely watch fall favorites because of the inaccessibility, he said.
Chris San Paolo, the Information Technology specialist in the Housing Department, said the inconsistency is not because of the university’s incapability to provide equal services for all students.
“Beachside’s cable is part of a Verizon contract and is managed by [the CSULB Research] Foundation,” San Paolo said.
Brian Nowlin, Chief Operating Officer at the CSULB Research Foundation, said the decision was more complicated than ensuring a satisfactory channel bundle, considering the costly renovations to establish the Beachside location.
“The estimated cost to extend the campus voice and data infrastructure to the property ranged from $700,000 to $1.75 million,” Nowlin said. “This did not include TV service. Our budget to renovate the property was not sufficient to include this work. However, we were able to outsource the service to Verizon for a FiOS TV and data network bundle at a cost within the projected budget.”
According to Nowlin, alternative television options will be evaluated when the contract becomes eligible for renewal in 2014.