I have a problem. I have a problem that no protest or doctor-prescribed cream is going to cure. My problem is that I am really getting fed up with this school’s lackluster cable system.So you might be thinking, “Gee, of all the issues in the news today this one does not seem so important. I mean we are about to start a war, somebody is using Maryland, Washington, D.C., and Virginia as target practice, and the elections are only a few weeks away: is this the best he can do?” Yes, yes it is, deal.

So I live in Milner and, for the most part, I like living there. Rooms are not so big, but the sink is very convenient, and the lobby is nice. This lackluster cable issue though, is a black mark on the quality of my room, as it is in all the rooms at Guilford.

What finally set me off about the cable happened only about two weeks ago. See, 7 p.m. rolled around, I sat down with some Chinese takeout to watch The Simpson’s, but it was not to be. Channel 10 had flat-lined, at least temporarily. So the next day I sat down to watch The Simpson’s again, but alas, no reception.

This frustrated me very much, not just because I really like The Simpson’s, but because this problem is endemic in our whole cable system. We did not get NBC for the first month of school, MTV2 comes in significantly louder than MTV, and CBS’s reception is never as good as FOX’s, which is really noticeable when I’m trying to watch football.

If our cable system were to take a personality test, it would come up, as schizophrenic; and if it were a person, it would be so drugged up that it would put Keith Richards to shame.

My biggest problem with this relatively minor issue is that there is really nothing that we as students can do about it. For example, if I had my own apartment and this was the kind of service I was getting from my cable company, I would stop paying the bill because I was not getting what I was paying for.

We, as students, pay a lot of money to come to this school. The majority of our money goes toward our classes, which certainly makes sense, but just because something is less important, does not mean that we should not be getting the bang for our buck. Students go off the meal plan all the time because they are dissatisfied with the food, but I can’t stop paying for the cable system because it sucks.

In the two years and change that I have been here, the cable system has stayed consistent – consistently bad. That tells me that there are no plans to change it for the future and make it better. The people who control our cable seem to be content to let us sit back and enjoy static because they have always allowed us to wallow in the world of bad vertical holds.

I know it’s not a big deal and it’s a small issue, but this is one thing that should not even be an issue in the first place. Regardless, it does not excuse the fact that we students pay a lot of money to come and here, and there is no reason that we should not get all that we are paying for. This, my friends, is a poor return on our investment.