On the Boob Tube

For Harvard students so overextended that they procrastinate research papers by doing problem sets, time spent legitimately “vegging-out” is a precious resource. It often surprises newcomers, then, to find the potential to maximize such leisure time stifled by the lack of a resource essential to truly uninhibited lounging—cable television. While most, including the University, have sat silently by, one particularly entrepreneurial student, Nicholas J. Castine ’09 took charge.

Motivated by his longing for the soothing song of SportsCenter and sitcoms upon his arrival at Harvard as a transfer student in the fall of 2006, Castine launched Crimson Cable, which developed a surprisingly feasible proposal for a business to provide cable via power lines to Harvard’s 12 undergraduate houses, only to see the proposal summarily dismissed by school administrators on the basis of largely superficial objections. Last August, Harvard University Information Services hired an outside consultant to evaluate the Crimson Cable proposal—but kept its results private until just this past week. While the report does raise some concerns regarding the equipment required for—and the liability to be borne by—Castine’s proposed business, the University’s unwillingness to transparently discuss these issues demonstrates an unforgivable lack of forthrightness.

Moreover, the proposal itself—even with the supposed obstacles—seems quite reasonable. In terms of cost, the investment of $35,000 per house, as estimated by the administration’s consultant, seems to us a trivial price to pay for the installation of a system along the lines of that proposed by Crimson Cable.

As for liability issues, an internal e-mail message written by Associate Dean of the College Judith H. Kidd in anticipation of a September interview with The Crimson, which appeared on the Undergraduate Council open e-mail list alongside the cable report, seems to indicate that these too are not the administration’s core concerns. House Masters and College administrators remained unconvinced of the desirability of cable, according to the message, but “if the College decides that supplying cable TV to the Houses is desirable, the College would manage the system and would most likely not contract the work to a student business.”

If this hostility to cable is still the College’s position, it is disingenuous for the administration to reject potential installation proposals on the grounds of supposed feasibility concerns. The administration has said that cable will be one of the improvements to be contemplated in the forthcoming house-by-house renovation effort. This may sound like a satisfactory alternative—and a reasonable justification for refusing to farm out the job to a lone entrepreneur—until one considers the meaning of “forthcoming” in this context. Late last year, Interim Dean of the College David R. Pilbeam said of the general timeline for renovations, “You folks won’t see anything, but your children might.” While the comment may simply be rhetorical flare, the underlying sentiment is clear: cable is one among many improvements that the College is in no rush to install.

While cable is by no means essential for survival, it is an option in the dorm rooms of seven of the eight Ivy League institutions. We hope Harvard will reconsider the enterprising proposal presented by Castine, else the school seems likely to add cable only by the time our children are “vegging-out” to holograms instead.