Despite the seemingly overwhelming enthusiasm of college students for shows like “Six Feet Under” and “Chappelle’s Show,” for students who wish to watch cable TV in their dorm lounges, it may come as a surprise that every single resident must pay a fee in order to have cable in the lounges.

Information Technology Systems and Services (ITSS) provides students with 12 courtesy channels but not basic cable. The University also does not allow satellites in the residence halls. Though dorm lounges serve as potential locations for cable programming, individual students would have to pay a cable fee for such services.

“In the dorm lounges we have what we call ‘lounge service,’” said Nancy Ware, director of planning for ITSS. “This includes all of the courtesy channels plus local channels, CNN and Headline News. If the students in that residence wanted the lounge TV to have cable services like TBS, then every student in that residence would need to subscribe to the basic cable package.”

Executive Director of ITSS Bill Clebsch said that giving each dorm room cable access was impractical.

“People pay on a per subscriber basis,” he said. “It has been looked at to put cable television into the technology fee, but that really drove the price up insanely. What we’re looking at is a situation where not many people subscribe to television.”

For this reason, many students said they choose not to purchase cable.

“Unless every single room in Paloma, approximately 30 rooms, paid the price of monthly cable for the year, the dorm as a whole would have to bear the cost of payment,” said senior Julie Lein, a resident assistant in Paloma. “About four dorm rooms actually decided to pay for cable this year, which would mean the dorm would have to subsidize 26 cable bills. This would completely wipe out our dorm funds and eliminate enjoyable activities like the ski trip, food at house meetings and camping.”

However, ITSS said that it must charge such fees to pay outside cable providers.

“The reason for this policy is that the University pays to have those channels made available to it, and since we’re not for profit, we need to recover those costs,” Ware said. “The basic rate for students is $28 a month but cable costs in Palo Alto would be about $50.”

Students felt that paying the price for such services left them without a real debate over whether or not dorm lounges should subscribe to cable.

“There was no real decision not to have cable in Paloma,” Lein said. “The decision was basically made in advance by the sheer cost of paying for cable. The costs just outnumber the benefits so greatly that the idea of paying for cable seems not only implausible but highly absurd.”

Junior Alex Padilla agreed .

“I think it is fine without cable,” he said. “Most people who really want cable have it in their own room. It’s not really worth the cost, as most people aren’t that concerned about not having cable.”

Instead of paying for dorm cable, students often find other ways to watch television.

“I usually go somewhere else if there’s something I really want to watch,” Padilla said. “People who want to watch a specific program can find another way — watching with a friend, downloading it or going to a sports bar, a cafe or the CoHo.”

Lein agreed that other forms of entertainment replace cable viewing.

“Most of the residents substitute by watching movies and DVDs, which is commonly done in the lounge,” she said. “Plus, the people who are actually willing to pay the price for lounge cable are probably hardcore enough not to be satisfied by having one central location with cable. They would want to have a personal television at their own disposal.”