Keeping up with our favorite television shows is a tough task for college students. Sometimes that late night astronomy lab prevents us from making it home in time to catch “The Office,” or that paper might never get done if we take an hour out of our night to watch the latest episode of “Desperate Housewives.”
Fortunately, the great ally of the undergraduate has come to our aid yet again. From the source that brought us Facebook, YouTube and weather.com — the internet — we now have the option of watching our favorite TV shows online.

p. The online television industry is small but growing, and even now there are a few options from which to choose when settling down at your computer to watch a show. A handful of networks, following the lead of MTV and shortly thereafter picked up by ABC, are offering free streaming of their most popular programs on their network websites. The shows are usually available about 24 hours after they originally air and the networks vary in how long they keep the shows available. While this option has the advantage of being completely free, it does have its setbacks. Video streaming can be a frustrating process, especially for those with a spotty wireless connection. The picture often stalls and sometimes flakes out altogether. You also aren’t safe from commercials; the episode is broken up into a few segments with 30-second commercials between each one.

p. These are still minor inconveniences compared to the nearly 10 minutes of commercials you have to suffer through while watching a show at its regular airing time. The networks may be sacrificing a lot of revenue by making shows available on the internet and it’s nice to know that you can at least minimize the browser on your desktop and play a quick game of Minesweeper while the commercial runs.
Nonetheless, commercials can be avoided altogether by coughing up $1.99 for an episode on iTunes. This option has its drawbacks too, including a wait time that can stretch to 20 minutes, depending on the speed of your connection. You also have to pay, and once they have your credit card number, it is all too easy to get sucked into the money-hole that is a convenient iTunes account. Still, the price is reasonable and you don’t have to stick around while it’s downloading. Plus, once you’ve paid, you can watch it offline and have access to it forever.

p. Opening an iTunes account is most likely your best bet, especially if you like television shows on networks like Fox, which does not yet offer free access to shows on its website. If you give up the notion that you will ever leave your weekly Thursday meeting in time to catch “Grey’s Anatomy,” you can save yourself some money and buy a “season pass,” which pays for the entire season ahead of time.

p. While there is still only a limited selection of shows available online through either method, things are looking up. Microsoft recently announced that TV shows can soon be downloaded at the Xbox Live website to be watched on a TV screen. Even the former mecca of illegal video downloading, BitTorrent, is in talks with networks to provide authorized videos — at a price.
The CW is one network that has yet to jump on the Internet bandwagon, so if you’re a “Gilmore Girls” fan you might be best off investing in TiVo. While the industry is still developing, its future looks bright. Television might not be headed toward obsolescence, but for the busy college student it is finally time to throw out the TV Guide because TV is now ready to rot your brain cells at whatever time is most convenient for you.

p. __Brittney Pescatore is a senior at the College. She enjoys watching TV the most when avoiding work on her thesis.__

p. Shortly before 10 a.m. Wednesday morning, the south side of Baskin-Robbins and the Blue Talon Bistro caught fire, burning a large section of Baskin-Robbins and causing damage to the Bistro.

p. Firefighters and investigators have yet to determine the exact cause of the fire, although they have been able to pinpoint that the fire originated outside of the building in the corner between Baskin-Robbins and the Blue Talon.

p. According to Williamsburg Fire Department Captain Chuck White, the fire started in a fenced-in area outside where the Bistro stored used linen napkins before they are picked up by a laundry service.

p. “The Bistro uses an outside laundry company for their linens,” White said. “In the corner, they have a little fenced-in gate where they just dropped [the linens].”

p. Although authorities have yet to discover exactly what ignited the linens, it is possible a group of smokers may have been responsible for the fire. Winne Porter, a visitor to Colonial Williamsburg, said that he entered the Peanut Shop at approximately 9:30 a.m. this morning.

p. “When I went in, I saw two people smoking at the corner [in between the Blue Talon and Baskin-Robbins] where the trash cans are,” he said. Porter said he then entered the Peanut Shop, and soon after was informed of the fire. “Next thing I know, I just heard ‘there’s a fire, get out,” he said.

p. White said that investigators had spoken to a witness Thursday morning who claimed to have seen people smoking cigarettes in the area before the buildings were evacuated, presumably the same witness who spoke with The Flat Hat Wednesday.

p. “The witness had spoken with the press, but not with the investigators until this morning,” White said.

p. According to White, all three properties, which also included the Peanut Shop, were occupied at the time of the blaze, although the majority of people inside were staff. “They made a quick attempt at extinguishing the flames and then bailed out,” White said. He also confirmed that there were no injuries during the fire.

p. A Blue Talon employee confirmed that the fire had started outside. Employees of Baskin-Robbins, where the structural damage appears to be much more extensive, declined to comment.

p. While precise figures of the damage caused are still unavailable, White said that he had heard some estimates of over one million dollars. “We’re still trying to get estimates from insurance adjusters,” he said.
p. Large sections of North Boundary and Prince George St. were blocked off throughout the morning. According to White, firefighters finished cleaning up all the hot spots shortly before noon, and a thorough investigation by local Fire Marshals and other authorities continued throughout the afternoon.

p. “This is just tragic,” President and Chairman of Colonial Williamsburg Colin Campbell said. “We will do everything we can to be helpful to our tenants who have suffered such a serious loss.”

This week, Residence Life decided not to implement a new schedule for the College’s housekeeping staff. The plan that was originally supposed to be put into effect Jan. 16 set up a rotating series of shifts to cover residence halls Monday through Saturday. One group of housekeepers would work the current, full day schedule, Monday through Friday. The other group would work the regular full schedule Monday through Thursday, and work only half days on Friday and Saturday. The groups would alternate between the Saturday hours.

p. “We now need to determine if students think there is a need for Saturday services and, if so, how we can provide it without impacting the lives of our housekeeping staff and without the need to impose unreasonable increases in room rates on our residents,” Deb Boykin, head of Residence Life, said.

p. Boykin and Allison Wildridge, associate director of Residence Life, said that initial proposals to have housekeeping staff on campus Saturdays was due in large part to surveys that expressed dissatisfaction from students on the upkeep of buildings.

p. Boykin said that the decision to do something was based on voluntary student surveys from the last few years. She said that the most recent survey, administered at the beginning of November, showed that a significant number of the 1,260 students who answered the survey were dissatisfied with bathroom cleanliness and trash removal.

p. After the survey results, Boykin and Wildridge said a few different proposals were suggested, including alternating working on Fridays or Saturdays, but the six-day Friday and Saturday half-day week received the best response.

p. Both wanted to stress that workers would still keep their 40-hour work week and that they were not going to start having housekeeping work on Sundays.

p. While Westridge said that the initial proposition was not met with an overwhelmingly negative response, workers expressed their frustration with the situation.

p. Wednesday of this week, students and workers held a rally at the Crim Dell Meadow in protest of Saturday hours. The rally was a celebration of the drop in the policy change, but many who attended also spoke of a frustration with the way that housekeeping staff has been treated in the past. Approximately 100 students and 30 housekeepers on their lunch break attended the rally.

p. “This is an issue among many,” said Cindy Hahamovitch, a professor of history at the College. She credited the drop of policy change to the work of student and housekeeping efforts to petition Residence Life.

p. “This issue show[s] that the only way workers’ rights are going to be protected at the College is if we stand up and fight for them,” said Andrew Schoffner, of the Tidewater Labor Support group, who organized the rally. “When we do that, we win.”

p. A housekeeper who wished to remain anonymous also said that she felt student support helped stop the policy change.

p. She said that workers were told on Tuesday that Residence Life had changed their minds about the policy.

p. “I think they were forced to change their minds by the students,” she said.

p. She added that many workers were frustrated with the policy proposal, but they were afraid to speak out for fear of losing their jobs.

p. “Working on Saturdays would not make a difference,” she said. “How can you ask so few people to do so much work? It’s not going to be any easier.”

p. She said that any problems were the fault of having a housekeeping staff that was too small, a sentiment that Schoffner and Hahamovitch echoed.

p. “They aren’t treated very fair,” Hahamovitch said. “They have to work Saturdays and even Sundays in the summer.”

p. The housekeeper said that the staff would be fine working Saturdays as additional hours with paid overtime. She added the cleanliness of the buildings would be improved if the staff was increased.

p. Boykin said that increasing the number of staff wasn’t in the budget. Hiring new staff and training them would cause an increase in student room rent.

p. The housekeeper expressed a continued frustration with the policy. She said that she didn’t understand the budget constraints or why overtime wasn’t available.

p. “I don’t know where the money is going,” she said.

p. Schoffner, who has worked with the housekeeping staff on the issue, said that they did not have a lot of resources at their disposal but that student voices helped the cause.

p. “A lot of times you hear, if you’ve got a problem, you’re supposed to go to your boss,” he said. “Nothing has gotten done that way.”

p. Schoffner said that, should the policy be brought back up, the students and the staff still had “fight left in them.”

p. Right now, Boykin said that they are evaluating the methodology of this policy.

p. “We believe providing housekeeping services on Saturdays will improve the living environment for our residents but we need to determine if residents feel the same way,” she said.

p. Vice President for Student Affairs Sam Sadler declined to speculate about whether or not Saturday work days or a six-day work week would be implemented in the future. He said he hopes to establish a campus dialogue about the issue.

p. “How important is it to us to have the residences halls cleaned six days a week and, if it is important, what is the appropriate mechanism for our doing that? If it is going to happen, how can it be done with the least amount of disruption to our staff? Before anything else happens, those are questions I want us to explore as a community,” Sadler said.

This column is about the Bowl Championship Series.

p. Need I say more?

p. I could have easily made this column about why the University of Michigan (currently no. 3 in the BCS rankings) deserves a birth over the no. 2-ranked University of Southern California in the BCS championship game against no. 1 Ohio State University (after all, their only loss of the season came at the hands of Ohio State, the undisputed number one team in the country, by only three points on the Buckeyes’ home field). I could also have made a case for no. 4 University of Florida, another one-loss team who has emerged as the top team (if they can beat the University of Arkansas in tomorrow’s SEC championship game) in a conference with five teams currently in the top 16 of the BCS rankings, as the most deserving team to face the Buckeyes in the title game.

p. But deciding between these three qualified teams — none of whom have played each other head to head this season — is next to impossible. So, as we seem to do with everything else in this day and age, we’ve left the decision up to a computer. It is this very system that is the subject of this column.

p. It’s time we dropped the BCS computer system altogether. Nobody likes it. Anybody who says that he does is just saying so to get attention. Think of it as the sports equivalent of someone who pronounces tomato, “to-mah-to.” Who do these people think they are? They clearly only want attention. Unless of course they’re British, in which case they probably don’t know much about the BCS anyway, because to them, football actually means soccer. But I digress. As it has been for a while now, it’s time college football switches to a playoff system.

p. Before I lay out my plan, it’s important for me to note that this is by no means a completely original creation, but rather something that draws on the countless ideas I’ve heard over the years regarding a college football playoff system, including some ideas of my own. So without any further ado, here’s my three-step plan:

p. 1.) Abolish the BCS ranking system. Form a committee, just like college basketball has for its tournament, that will select the most deserving eight teams in the country and seed them accordingly, numbers one through eight. There will be no automatic bids to the playoffs for winning one’s conference (although the committee should take that into account). By keeping the playoffs to eight teams, this will only extend the playoff team’s seasons by two games at the most and will give only the most deserving teams a shot at the title. Also, the committee members would be required to have seen every game — or, if that proves not to be feasible, an equal number of games — of each team that is being considered for the playoffs. As it stands now, both the AP and Coaches’ Polls — which play major roles in the BCS standings — include the votes of many people who have not seen many games or have much knowledge of the teams involved. This creates an unfair media influence over the polls. For example, if a coach hasn’t seen much of either USC or Michigan and he hears ESPN’s Kirk Herbstreit rant about how impressive USC was in their victory over the University of Notre Dame and how they now deserve to be in the national title game (which he did, just one week after saying Michigan deserved to be there), are you telling me that the coach’s vote will not be influenced by that?

p. 2.) Once the matchups are assigned (the one seed would play the eight seed, the second the seventh, and so on), the first round will take place on or around Dec. 24, depending on what days of the week the dates fall. The winners of the first round will play in semifinal games on New Year’s Day, and the final game will be held on or around Jan. 8 (again, depending on the calendar). By keeping this schedule, it reduces the layoff for some of the top-ranked teams by two weeks and will ensure two marquis matchups on New Year’s Day, in keeping with tradition.

p. 3.) Keep all the other bowl games as they are. The playoffs can just be seen as their own separate entity. The NCAA can pitch the idea to the major bowls (i.e. Rose, Sugar, etc.) of sponsoring the playoff games, but if not, then the rest of the bowls can select any bowl-eligible team they choose outside of the eight playoff teams. As much as I’d like to see some of the lesser bowls eliminated (although how would my life be complete without the PapaJohns.com Bowl?), there’s too much money involved to think that this could realistically happen.

p. That’s all I’ve got. My plan probably has plenty of flaws, but there’s one thing I am sure of: the BCS system must be changed. Playoffs are the only real answer, as they will ensure an undisputed national champion. The most common argument against a playoff system is that there is so much money being made off the system as it currently operates. But if the NCAA can’t make money off of a product as attractive as college football playoffs, then maybe (and this is something I’m sure the NCAA hasn’t considered) they shouldn’t be in the business of making money.

p. __Jeff Dooley is the assistant sports editor for The Flat Hat. He finds the Bowl Championship Series both hostile and abusive.__

The Student Assembly passed bills at Tuesday’s meeting advocating changes to the judicial code, a bill to install a compost tumbler outside the Commons, a bill to create cards telling students what their Resident Assistants can and cannot do and a bill to remove the Stolen ID fee.

p. The first bill, the Judicial Code Reformation Act, which passed 15-4-1, proposes a series of changes to the student Judicial Code. The bill does not authorize any changes to be made, but calls for a student referendum to be held during the March 2007 General Election.

p. The bill was sponsored by Sen. Will Coggin, a senior, and co-sponsored by Sen. Joe Luppino-Espositio, a junior, Senators Matt Beato, Zach Pilchen and Sean Sheppard, sophomores, and Sen. Scott Morris, a freshman. There were two key provisions discussed on the floor. The first suggested changing the burden of proof used in judicial hearings from “clear and convincing evidence” to “beyond reasonable doubt.”

p. Coggin expressed that this was necessary in order to ensure that students were given a fair trial process.

p. “I feel like too many students feel guilty until they are proven innocent,” he said.

p. Dean of Students Patrica Volp said that it is not uncommon for schools across the country to require “clear and convincing evidence.”

p. “One thing that is important; we don’t send students to jail,” she said. “One of the most serious reasons courts use beyond a reasonable doubt is because they can send people to jail.”

p. The bill was amended to include the stipulation that if evidence was required beyond reasonable doubt, the “College must establish the evidence using the necessary investigating measures.”

p. Another key provision that was passed was a suggestion to change the judicial council selection process to resemble the honor council process. Currently, judicial council members are selected through an application reviewed by staff. The bill proposes that judicial council members are selected by a student vote, the same as the honor council.

p. While the referendum does not take place until March, the sponsors of the bill felt strongly about the proposals.

p. “The whole system is set up as Alice and Wonderland and that absurd trial she goes to,” Pilchen said.
The Campus Composting Act passed through the SA 20-1-0. The bill, sponsored by Pilchen, appropriates $550 from the Student Activities Consolidated Reserve Account to the Student Environmental Action Coalition to purchase a compost tumbler that will be put outside the Commons. The tumbler will use selected leftovers from the Commons and the Marketplace to create compost. According to Pilchen and SEAC members, the tumbler will save the campus money because the gardening staff will no have to buy fertilizer. The fertilizer made will be used in the garden outside of the Commons.

p. The SA also passed the Know Your Rights Act, 19-0-0, which was sponsored by Sen. Scott Fitzgerald, a senior, and Senators Plichen and Sheppard. The bill appropriates $265 from the student activities consolidated reserves to the College American Civil Liberties Union chapter to purchase 7,500 “Know Your Rights in a Residence Hall” cards.

p. The cards, to be distributed through student mail, have a list of information about what RAs can and cannot do.

p. The SA passed a provision of the Auxiliary Services Mutual Cooperation Act, sponsored by Sen. Andrew Blasi, a freshman. The bill, which passed 11-7-0, allocates $686 from the consolidated reserves to remove the $5 Stolen ID fee during the 2006 to 2007 and 2007 to 2008 fiscal years.