In the past few days, there have been many articles exchanged for and against the plans for a “Cyclone Cinema” in the abandoned Varsity Theater near Campustown. I personally am friends with many of the students who have been championing this cause. I want to invite all 28 senators of GSB who passed the bill on Wednesday to create a student focused theater to think hard about that decision and encourage any students interested in these plans to voice your thoughts to GSB President Turk, who is slated to sign or veto the bill during the next week.

I have a few issues with the Cyclone Cinema I want to note to the student body. These are facts that are seen as maybe unimportant or unflattering by the committee that has been pushing this movement along, but I believe should be brought to light. I will apologize for any incorrect statements I make, but I am currently acting on the information I have and the proposal document provided to me by Ian Ringgenberg, who has championed this cause.

First off, the planners have not yet mentioned the quality of content that will be available at the proposed movie theater. It has been explained to me that the same company that helps provide content for Free Friday Flicks and SUB-Films will provide movies for the Cyclone Cinema. It seems that the format may have been upgraded more recently, but perhaps a few of you remember just a couple of years ago, when Free Friday Flicks got movies on VHS tape. Not the best way to watch a movie, even if it’s on a 15-foot projection screen. The proposed movie theater in Campustown would be using the latest and greatest distribution system from this same company, which delivers DVD-quality movies digitally.

Now, a few people may recognize the differences between watching a DVD and watching a film in the theater, but many do not, so let me explain. A DVD stores both compressed video and sound for a movie. The video is stored at a resolution of 720×480 pixels, or about 1/4 the pixel resolution of your laptop’s screen. Those are the only pixels provided, so that is the maximum resolution at which the movies in the Cyclone Cinema can be played. For comparison, most digital movie theaters today use a 2K-resolution projector (somewhat equivalent to 35mm), which has a resolution of 2048×1080, or 6x DVD resolution. This means that when going to see a movie at the competing North Grand 5 dollar theater, you will see a movie that has detail at least 6x as fine as that in the Cyclone Cinema for only $0-$1 more + no student fee cost.

If you break up the proposed cost of buying or renting the theater space in addition to the stated ~$40,000-60,000 cost per year planned to be billed to GSB that will come from your student activities fee, the cost of the facility will be $2.70-$4.17 per student per year over the next 5 years, at the current enrollment level. If you go to the theater to see lots of movies, this might be beneficial to you (lower cost per movie overall), but if you never go to the theater, you will still be paying a couple dollars per year to operate it. If you never go to see a movie at the North Grand 5, you won’t need to pay them a dime to keep the theater in existence. The opposing argument to this is that the venue will provide a learning opportunity for the aspiring business students who run the theater and that benefit justifies the cost per student. I’m not sure that a few student jobs and a unique learning opportunity is worth approximately $100,000 per year of your money, but it’s up to you to decide that.

Maybe I am just a concerned engineering student with a love for numbers rambling on about how bad this project may turn out, but I’d like to think that there are more concerned students out there than GSB realizes. If that is the case, feel free to give Jon Turk a call (GSB: 515-294-1585), or send him an e-mail ([email protected]) and make your voice heard. I would love to see this project progress and deeply enjoyed the old Varsity Theater, but I must object to any plans that just create a student-funded low-quality zombie Varsity Theater out of the ashes.

Rick Hanton is a senior in computer engineering, former GSB Director of IT and Director of Expansion of SEDS-USA.