Students spending time in the cafeteria at Las Positas College have been provided with some new entertainment.
Televisions showing MTVU, a channel made available to colleges across the United States, have been installed in the LPC cafeteria. The four TVs have been set up in areas where they can be seen at most points across the cafeteria.
The channel only plays music videos, though still with commercials as it is the sister channel to MTV and MTV2.
However, the music is not that of mainstream artists. They are all up and coming artists, some whose music on the channel is their first to be released publicly.
LPC freshman Aldo Serna said “I noticed it when I first sat down about 20 minutes ago, and I’ve been watching it since.”
Others kept up their regular routine, and because it was loud in the cafeteria they could not hear the music.
“I kind of like it though,” sophomore Kayla Garrison said. “Because if you’re working on something, it’s not overbearing, it’s part of the background noise.”
MTVU was launched in February of 2002, and as it shows today is made to appeal to the collegiate audience, though with programming that will remain familiar to classic MTV viewers.
“Sometimes it’s nice, and other times it’s not,” LPC student Krista Bruns said. “Those other times, I catch myself staring at it too long.”
Bruns is an employee of the Starbucks in the cafeteria, so MTVU is constantly playing in front of her. A coworker of Bruns’, Gideon Egbuchulan, also likes the addition to the cafeteria.
“It’s nice, I dig it,” Egbuchulan said. “It’s fresh, it’s hip, and it’s keeping the jive up here.”
Ashley Landicho, a worker for Fresh and Natural, the catering company in the cafeteria, thinks it is good for other reasons.
“I don’t think it makes too much of a difference, but there used to be students who would set up their own computer consoles in here for gaming,” Landicho said. “The
problem then was that they took up a lot of space, and were big distractions to the other students in here.”
The official MTVU website states that “MTVU programs music videos from emerging artists that can’t be seen anywhere else, news, student life features and initiatives that give college students the tools to advance positive social change.”
If a student visits the MTVU website, they’ll be given the chance to vote for the music videos that reach the TV broadcast.
LPC students now have a new addition to fill their time. Whether eating or not, alone or with company, the cafeteria can now fulfill entertainment needs with the college television network known as MTVU.
