Fall 1986: 10:00 a.m. You roll over drowsily to check the clock. Looks like you're late again for Moral Reasoning 22. You splash cold water on your face and sprint to Sanders Theater.

Fall 1987: 10:00 a.m. You roll over, reach for the remote controls, turn on the TV, and there's Michael J. Sandel talking about Kant in your living room.

After 10 years of seemingly endless planning and debate, cable TV is finally coming to Cambridge. With a final license signed by the city and the cable franchise last December, the first underground cable lines were laid in North Cambridge in late January. By April some of the city's residents will be watching.

The big question remaining, however, is to what extent cable television will come to Harvard. City and university officials have been meeting since September to figure out the precise how's and why's of cable's arrival on campus and around town.

So far, Harvard has been told it will receive 10 free cable installations, which will be distributed across the Cambridge campus, linking various facilities together for educational purposes. Potential locations currently mentioned include the Science Center, Sanders Theater, the Kennedy School, and other central classroom buildings.

The Cable Television Committee (CATV)--a group of 13 representatives from the College, the graduate schools, and Massachusetts Hall--has met twice in the past month to determine strategies for maximizing cable TV's potential at Harvard.

"Universities are likely to be using media more and more in education in the future, and we want to figure out how," says Stephen Hall, director of Harvard's Office of Technology (OIT).

Alfred A. Pandiscio, associate director of the OIT, says the committee was considering programs such as campus-wide broadcasting of lectures and special performances, improved data-transmitting equipment so research data could be sent around campus, and possibly, the formation of a Harvard-operated cable television station.

The University has operated an internal cable system for about 18 years which is used occasionally for Medical School teaching and recording special events, says Pandiscio, such as Bishop Desmond Tutu's Kennedy School speech in January. But Harvard's old system--like MIT's cable network--is technologically obsolete, and does not allow for communication beyond certain campus buildings.

Other Harvard officials see cable being used to broadcast popular university-wide lectures around the Boston area. "We see great opportunities in Harvard's being plugged into local cable networks," says Charles Trueheart, associate director of the Institute of Politics. "This way, we can share what we do in the [ARCO] Forum with a larger audience than we can squeeze into the K-School."

Although the university says it wants to overhaul its entire computer and telephone network with the help of cable lines, professors in the applied science department say they have their doubts about the usefulness of cable communication for data-transmission.

"We have networks capable of low-speed data-transmission, and we're getting higher-speed equipment by the end of the year," says Peter S. McKinney, associate dean of applied sciences. "[The plans of the] CATV won't have any particular impact on computer work within the university."

"I guess there is some possible use for it beyond the local environment," McKinney says, explaining that Harvard computer needs are satisfied by a supercomputer system based in Princeton, N.J.

The committee is "still raising lots of questions and we haven't had time to find many answers yet," Pandiscio says.

By early next fall, students may be watching movies, economics lectures, and MTV from a comfortable seat in their living rooms, if the investigation of wiring dormitories now underway goes well, according to Henrietta Gates of American Cablesystems. American is the cable franchise selected by the City of Cambridge last March to complete the estimated $225 million wiring of this metropolis of 95,000 residents.