Students, faculty and the community can now rent DVDs from a kiosk on the UNA campus, while also contributing 10 percent of revenue to the SGA endowed scholarship, which was established last year.

Kenny Porter, owner of Vendisk LLC, signed a contract with SGA in late June and said he hopes the kiosk will do well in the GUC vestibule. He also hinted at including video game rentals someday but added that plans to do so are in the distant future.

SGA President Ralph Akalonu believes the kiosk will offer something new to students when the fall semester begins in August.

“[The kiosk] is a service on campus for [students] to utilize,” he said. “They don’t have to get in a car and drive around looking for a movie. The GUC is a high traffic area, a student hub, on campus. The convenience of having a DVD kiosk on campus is a plus for the student body and I’m excited to see the response.”

The kiosk is in an area that is wheelchair accessible and since the doors to the vestibule are never locked, the DVD kiosk is available 24 hours a day. Payment can be made by debit or credit card and there is no cash slot because of liability issues. The machine also lacks a MANE card reader.

“[The] university is changing software systems on the MANE card,” said UNA student Cameron Kelly-Johnson, who spearheaded the effort to get the kiosk on campus.

Kelly-Johnson thinks it might be confusing to have a MANE card and a regular credit and debit card reader on the same machine. Nonetheless, he believes the kiosk will be popular on campus because of the accessibility and the price of rentals, which vary based on the movie.

Using the machine to rent a DVD is easy, officials said. After perusing the selection, picking a movie and typing the item number in, a description will appear overhead on the screen display. Users have the option of either buying or renting movies.

Once a person’s credit or debit card has been swiped, they have 10 minutes to decide if they want that movie and may return it within that time period. To prevent theft once the movie is returned, the disks are equipped with RIFD tags.

Kelly-Johnson is also working on a website which will allow users to check the status of movies in the DVD kiosk. He hopes the website will be up before school starts in the fall.

Executive Editor Lucy Berry contributed to this report.