Jason Preston
Writing

How many DWA majors does it take?

Jason Preston · 3 min read ·

Oxy sends out a dialy e-mail newsletter (called the “oxy digest”)with campus happenings, news, and other student-submitted bulletins that relate to campus happenings. This blurb was in today’s digest:

“I was a big television junkie as a teen. When I came to Oxy, I completely forgot about television. It wasn’t until the third month when I realized how little TV I had watched and how free I felt from it. No addictions to television programs and making time for them to know ‘what happens next,’ no procrastinating on homework because the NEXT show after looked good too, and no giving up quality friends time for a one-way media box.”

“Cable installation in dorm rooms does not encourage or foster leadership for, ‘an increasingly complex, inter-dependent and pluralistic world.’”

“I have seen the effects of room cable at Pitzer - it has made the students isolated from each other and apathetic to campus life.”

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Dear Classmates,

When Oxy was debating installing dorm-room cable TV a few years ago, I encouraged students to write quick notes on what effect they thought cable TV would be have on our community. While I respect the dedication Rameen Talesh and Tom Slobko have demonstrated for improving the breadth of amenities available on campus, I encourage you to think about whether dorm-room cable should be part of your Oxy experience.

Regards,

***************
“Friends don’t let friends watch Cable TV”
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“To me, adding cable TV to every dorm room seems like we’re proposing to turn this once-prestigious college into an expensive roach motel; ‘HBO in every room!’ is what our Mission Statement should say. The Oxy community is already crumbling slowly, and this death blow is not a step anyone needs
to take.”

Now I should fill in some facts:

  1. Over the break, OXY departments (mainly ITS) installed expensive network hardware to carry cable signals over the existing wired network in Oxy, allowing students to watch some Cable channels on their computers in their rooms.

  2. Students voted for 25 channels to be included in the $30 monthly basic cable package, and for a few sports channels to be available in a “package” for an additional $10 a month, all charged to the student account.

  3. This is an optional service. Buy it if you want it, don’t if you don’t.

OK. Now for some guesswork:

  1. Oxy is unlikely to un-install and throw out the expensive equipment and renege on whatever contract arrangements they have made with the cable providers. Campaigning against OxyTV is literally only an effort to stop people from watching TV.

  2. People are going to watch TV.

  3. The “Oxy Community” is, in fact, a place where many different people of different mindsets are actually living, and it is not unreasonable for the school to provide access to living services that are similarly available to people who live off-campus. Such as cable.

Basically, this is exactly the kind of carefully-crafted neutral-but-argumentative pseudo-political and almost entirely specious statement that I hear time and again from almost literally everyone in my major (Diplomacy and World Affairs), and every time I see it I get more and more discouraged from taking any of my classes.

I get the feeling this is not a good way to be approaching my major.