Going to school in what USA Today says is the most expensive state to live in can make finding affordable activities challenging. Through Residence Life and the Student Events team in Student Leadership, Activities and Service, BYU-Hawaii provides fresh movies each month for students living in the hales and TVA that can be viewed at the campus Little Theatre, online, and on television.The Residence Life offerings extend to the Little Theatre and sometimes the Aloha Center, where a selection of 12 different movies per month play for the residents, with a showing every Wednesday, Friday and Saturday. Online, movies have three months before they are taken down. A sophomore from Nevada studying social work, Emma Baggett, said she has been taking advantage of being able to watch them online. “It’s a lot easier to watch them online whenever you can,” Baggett said, “because of time constraints and homework.” While others may come to enjoy the movies, they are specifically arranged as a benefit for those residents staying in on campus housing as an extension of their lounge space, according to Alison Whiting, director of Student Leadership, Activities and Service (SLAS).Shirley Tovey is the Coordinator of Student Development for SLAS. She helps to coordinate the movie showings and said the way to for on campus residents to access the movies online is simple. “To get the movies on demand, you just type in the link https://movies.byuh.edu/site/SDC/content/browse.aspx.” Tovey said it can also be accessed through the BYUH home page by searching ‘movies on demand’ and clicking ‘Free on Demand Movies/BYU-Hawaii Calendar,’ then clicking the link https://watchnow.reslife.com/byu. Along with the online movies, all the movies that month are also available on television.“They've been around for longer than I've been in school,” Tovey said. Tovey said she has fond memories of watching the movies via television when she lived in the hales. “If on my day off if it was raining–and back then I didn’t have a laptop–I would go in the lounge.” There she would turn to the BYUH channel. “That’s where I was able to see the movies and spend my day watching movies.” She noted the absence of commercials was also a plus. “They just showed one movie after the next,” she said. The committee in charge of choosing movies, which Tovey is a part of, makes sure each movie follows BYUH’s Movie and Entertainment Policy, and is in standards with the school and church. The company that the school rents the movies from, Swank Motion Pictures, edits out vulgar language in order to maintain the standards, said Tovey. Because of the atmosphere this creates, Tovey said, “We have a lot of families [living in Temple View Apartments that] come on the weekends with their children.” Freshman Ammon Autele, a business management major from American Samoa, came with his family when he was between the ages of 3 and 6. “I still remember watching Mulan. I loved it… We used to go with a bunch of other TVA family friends.” Uploaded Jan. 14, 2016
Writer: Alyssa Olsen
