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After Stamp officials said last semester that the Hoff Theater would likely end its run as an independent theater by January 2010, a compromise measure is keeping the campus landmark afloat — for now.

Movies now play Thursday through Saturday at just $3 for students and at newly standardized times. Although this abbreviated schedule is a downsized version of last semester’s, Stamp Student Union officials previously considered shutting down the theater entirely to rent the space out to university-based groups seven days a week. With the change in plans, student groups can rent the space for their own functions all day Sunday through Wednesday.

“It was never going to be closed,” student union director Gretchen Metzelaars said. “We just talked about operating it differently, and that’s what we’re doing.”

Metzelaars noted that the theater struggled to compete against multiplexes and Netflix, failing to break even for the past several years. The unprofitable on-campus theater cost the student union $233,000 a year to operate and was given $150,000 in student activity fees.

The Hoff’s drain on the university’s resources became especially clear when the student union faced major losses after renewing the University Book Center’s contract with Barnes and Noble for $1.4 million less than past agreements.

Operating the Hoff for a partial week will allow the student union to spend $30,000 to $40,000 less on the theater, Metzelaars said. 

Students were relieved to hear the decades-old Hoff was not gone for good.

“It’s a good compromise,” junior criminology and criminal justice major Robert Elzein said. “I think it would be a good idea to keep it around for people who don’t go out drinking at night, and would rather just stay in and watch a movie.”

Others liked that student groups now had an opportunity to utilize the space on days when the theater would sometimes show films to an empty auditorium.

“I think it’s probably better this way, so that students are able to take advantage of having a nice stage,” sophomore communication major Angel Schlogel said. “I know we’ve had theatrical groups perform in upstairs rooms in Stamp, and I think it’s better to use a theater for that.”

The Hoff’s student employees said the new schedule will help bring in more people to see movies.

Thursday through Saturday were the theater’s highest grossing days, and the Hoff has also restricted show times to the popular 5 p.m., 7:30 p.m., and 10 p.m. slots.

One employee, who asked to remain anonymous because he wasn’t sure if student union employees were authorized to talk to the press, said he thinks the changes are going to be a success.

“We’re keeping costs low and showing more recent movies,” he said. “We’ve only been open one weekend this semester, but I noticed a lot more people came out.”

Although Metzelaars said she has accepted that Hoff will never be a profit-making venture, she hopes the theater will finally break even.

But, Metzelaars said, she couldn’t promise that allowing the Hoff Theater to remain open for movies, even on a more limited schedule,  would be a risk-free gamble.

If students continue to leave the theater empty and opt instead for rentals or seeing movies at off-campus movie theaters, the Hoff might still be in danger of being shut down in the future.

“We continue to question whether movies are still a viable piece [of the student union], whether students watch them here when they have RedBox or can just download them onto their computers,” Metzelaars said. “We watch everything in the Union very closely, like the TerpZone and the theater, to make sure people want them.”