Staff Editorial
Campus always seems to look a bit different when students arrive back on campus after a break. Usually this involves some sort of upgrade to campus infrastructure, a change to the inventory at Waves Café or a new landscaping project that has been completed to help re-enforce our aesthetic bragging rights.
But the addition around campus following this year’s spring break was even more noticeable than usual — in the form of shiny new plasma screens that were installed in various high-traffic locations around campus.
The new LG televisions (which are sold for a hefty $5,400 a pop on LG’s Web site) were mounted on the walls in a joint effort by the administration and SGA. The intended goal of the project is to provide a new outlet for students to get information and for student groups to promote their upcoming events.
Many know that SGA had this plan in the works for a while — and since they were finally installed last week, questions have been raised as to whether they are necessary and, if so, how SGA could have possibly paid for all of this on their own.
The answer: they didn’t. $3,000 from last year’s roughly $70,000 budget was allocated for the project, but delays forced the funds to be transferred over to this year’s budget. However, a mere $3,000 would not even buy one of these plasma screens, let alone five of them.
Some students are concerned their tuition money that is allocated to SGA went to pay for this project, which is technically true. But a majority of the cash came from the administration, which still uses our tuition dollars for these types of projects.
But as many students have seen, the new televisions have so far done little to in the way of radically changing how students get their information. We already have daily e-mail updates (“Pepperdine Today”) that provide us with the rundown of upcoming events, a student life calendar that goes into each of our mailboxes, WaveNet’s alerts and calendars, and numerous flyers that inundate us at all corners of campus.
The $3,000 that SGA put into the fund for the new TVs was merely symbolic — an action that showed the supposed student interest behind the project (the Student Senate approved the project last year). Despite such a strong message that the symbolic action sent, the administration still decided to sit on the idea for a year before following through.
While many would argue the addition of these plasma screens is a necessary technological upgrade (most other schools also use TVs as an outlet for information), the lack of content should be cause for concern — especially considering the cost which could have run the school anywhere from $20,000 to $35,000. While this might be pennies when compared to our $850 million endowment, it should raise questions among students as to whether the hefty price we pay to attend class here is being well spent.
Currently, all that is really being televised on these screens are the current weather (as if that’s crucially important in Malibu), the time, various upcoming events and 24-hour coverage of the 2006 national champion men’s tennis team hoisting the trophy.
While pride and recognition of our athletic teams is important, there are more pressing issues these televisions could be used for. As an example, why not focus on current events, by putting CNN on the TV in the Waves Café (which was rather ill-placed by the way)? In sum, we should be using this fantastic new technology as a means to get information from outside, as opposed to inside, the notoriously stifling Pepperdine bubble.
As SGA president Andy Canales emphasized, the content does need to be improved and the current setup is merely a trial run in what was referred to as a “pilot project” by SGA. They also noted a Web site would soon be up and running for feedback on the project.
The plans he outlined were promising: a newsfeed from the Associated Press, broadcasts of NewsWaves 26 and SGA campaign speeches, among other things. The televisions can still be used to get the word out regarding campus events and alerts, but we feel there should be a bit more variety with how they are being used.
03-20-2008