Tom Benoit
Equinox Staff
For the 2019-2020 school year, Residential Life made the decision to get rid of the cable in students’ dorms.
Associate Dean of Student and Director of Residential Life Kent Drake-Deese said, “Cutting cable is becoming more common among college campuses.”
Although cable is not available in student dorms, televisions in common areas still have cable connection. According to Drake-Deese, students were using the cable service less and less, and the cable infrastructure needed many repairs. The cable infrastructure itself had many problems. “There was a lot of problems that had to do with the wiring of the system. The cable went out last spring, and we got no complaints about it being out. I guess there was nothing good on that night,” Drake-Deese said.
“It wasn’t worth spending over a million bucks for something nobody uses, it saved a lot of money. Changing the money that went toward cable was changed toward improving wifi bandwidth. This money went to the creation of the KSC_Device WiFi,” said Drake-Deese. The decision to cut the cable saves the campus a lot of money. In lieu of the lack of cable, a new WiFi service was added, KSC_Device. This service was added specifically for streaming and gaming. The creation of this was provided by the diverting of funds from the cable budget, and adding more to improving bandwidth.
“We do have cable, it’s just in common spaces, not in students’ rooms. Students were not using it as streaming became preferred among students. Also, the cable infrastructure needed repairs, so we had to ask, ‘should we be paying so much for something that is not being used?’ We wanted to keep it in the common areas because it created community,” says Drake-Deese.
This decision was not made independently of the Office of Residential Life. They asked RAs and their residents, student assemblies and other students. “We held a student assembly, the RAs, we asked general students that we knew, if I met with you last semester I would’ve asked you the same thing, the RA’s gave their own input as well as asking their own residents, Drake-Deese said.
Tom Benoit can be contacted at
tbenoit@kscequinox.com
