Residence halls association launches on-the-go program

Thanks to a new service launched this week by the Residence Halls Association, students don’t have to be in the dorms to watch RHA TV.

RHA is an on-campus student government group that represents all students living in residence halls.

RHA TV, or channels 11 and 12 in dorms and campus buildings, shows a rotating schedule of movies. Starting Monday, the service was available online through the RHA TV On-the-Go program.

Scott Bishop, director of RHA TV, said the new service will take RHA TV to new heights by diversifying the way students can view the programming. The service can be accessed by logging on to RHA’s Web site, rha.msu.edu/tv.

“I’m very excited to see On-the-Go finally go live,” Bishop said in an e-mail. “I think it will take RHA TV to a whole new level, allowing residents to access channels 11 and 12 from anywhere on campus.”

Bishop said RHA has worked with Swank Motion Pictures Inc. since the beginning of 2009 to launch RHA TV On-the-Go and has been given a free one-year trial by the company to operate the service.

He said RHA will decide whether to continue offering RHA TV On-the-Go based on student response to the service.

“If we receive a positive response to the service and we decide to continue it … the fee will be $5,000 per semester,” he said.

Melissa Hackett, RHA’s director of public relations and advertising, said the service only can be accessed by students who paid the RHA tax at the beginning of the semester and have not asked for a refund of the tax.

Hackett said RHA TV On-the-Go’s current bandwidth only can support about 500 people accessing the service at the same time, but the group’s director of technology, Anthony McKenna, is working to increase the bandwidth. The increase would allow all able students to access the service on the site at the same time.

“We are anticipating a large response to the new On-the-Go service, so we are working on adding more bandwidth to support more users at once on the site,” McKenna said.

Bishop said although students might be tempted to use the service during class, it is students’ responsibility to pay attention during lecture.

“Of course we can’t control what every student does while in class,” he said. “But I genuinely believe that On-the-Go won’t add to the number of students who are distracted during class times.”

Betsy Shiner, an elementary education sophomore, said it likely won’t be any more of a distraction during class than other Web sites.

“I think with laptops, there’s an endless amount of distractions no matter what,” she said.