SOUTHEAST STUDENT GOVERNMENT TO LAUNCH ON-CAMPUS TV CHANNEL

Southeast Missouri State University students will be able to keep up with campus activities on a student-run television channel.

Student Government is setting up the channel, slated to be in operation by the middle of the fall semester. Bids for the equipment will be sought within a few weeks.

The closed-circuit channel will offer a bulletin board of campus briefs. Brief reports on national news could be broadcast over the system too.

"It is going to basically update people on different activities on campus," said Jason Lane, Student Government president.

"One of the systems we are looking into will download national news four times a day," he said.

The whole system will be run from a computer in the Student Government office at the University Center.

Lane said a graduate assistant would type up information about campus activities. The information would be displayed with color graphics on television monitors.

"It is a slide program type of thing," he said.

About 50 televisions will be installed in the public areas of university buildings, Lane said. The channel switchers on the sets will be disconnected so that students can't change the channel.

"We are going to have it on 24 hours a day," said Lane.

The whole system will cost from $10,000 to $20,000, which will be financed with student-fee money carried over from last year's Student Government budget.

Southeast's newspaper, the Capaha Arrow, regularly publishes campus news. But Lane said the TV channel will allow campus news to reach more students and on a more timely basis.

"It is the electronic age," he observed.

Music from the university's closed-circuit campus radio station may be carried over the cable TV channel. "We are still in the process of negotiating on that," said Lane.

Lane said students like the idea of having their own information channel.