As of last Friday, Tufts students officially have another means to procrastinate. The Mayer Campus Center is now the home of a DVD rental machine containing both new releases and classic collegiate films.
Described as "extremely easy to use" by Director of Student Activities Jodie Nealley, the machine accepts only major credit cards as a form of payment. "This is not Tufts-related, so there's no point in bringing your ID," she said.
Students can select from a wide variety of films using a touch-screen, including some of the newest DVDs on the market, such as "Mean Girls" and "The Alamo," which are available now.
The machine stores a maximum of 100 DVDs at a time and is manually updated every week. Once a student inserts a credit card as a method of payment, the DVD is released from the machine.
Movies will cost 99 cents as a promotion for the first two weeks of the machine's operation, but prices will rise after next Friday. But "even when the prices go up, it will still be cheaper than going to Blockbuster," Nealley said.
Students who rent DVDs have only one night to watch them. Late fees do apply, though credit cards will never be charged more than $24.99 for any single DVD, according to Nealley,
One of the system's most convenient features is that by visiting the company's Web site, DVDDirect.biz, students will be able to check what movies are available at Tufts' rental station before walking over to the campus center.
"This sounds like one of the best features this system can offer," Nealley said. "When the weather gets cold, students living uphill won't have to walk for miles before realizing that the movie they want has already been rented."
The list of films has not yet been updated on the Web site, but it will be soon, she said.
Tufts may be at the forefront of a college trend by adding a DVD rental program. "We heard about this new technology in the spring [of last year]," Nealley said. "We struck a deal with the company, DVDDirect, and now have a six-month trial period."
Tufts is the second college in the country to have one of DVDDirect's rental devices. The first was Babson College in Wellesley, Mass.
The popularity of the DVD rental machine has not yet taken off, according to Office of Students Affairs student employee and senior Natalie Belin, who has not seen many students using the machine. "However, I've been hearing good things about it. People were testifying that it was good and that it worked," she said.
Nealley attributed the lack of enthusiasm among the student body to a lack of advertising. "A lot of students haven't heard about this yet," she said. "I think that as the semester progresses there will be a much greater interest in using the system."
But junior Samir Aziz said there are better DVD-rental options out there. "With Netflix.com you have a $20-per-month flat rate and you can rent as many as you want - all done over the Internet," he said. "DVDs get to you in one to three business days via first-class mail."
Other students considered the fact that Tisch Library rents out movies for free to all Tufts students. "The library has a nice selection of older movies but when I'm in the mood for something new I'd be willing to pay the money once in a while," junior Jeremy Konstam said.
Based on the popularity of the service, Nealley said that in the future "it's possible that the upper level of the Campus Center will get a station, and perhaps even the larger dormitories around campus," she said.
