Over the summer, Information and Technology Services (ITS) switched to a new provider for the Wi-Fi. While we all know that major changes like this often lead to a period of adjustment, many students have experienced ongoing and frustrating troubles with the Wi-Fi, despite being over halfway through the semester.
In a survey posted last week on the Jays’ App, 95.7 percent of respondents reported having difficulties with the Wi-Fi this semester. The majority of the issues have been found on personal laptops and smartphones, but students have also experienced problems with other devices. Students have had trouble within apps as well, with trouble loading YouTube, Instagram and Canvas specifically.
Generally, however, issues with the Wi-Fi seem to stem from a general inability to connect in a timely fashion and stay connected to the internet.
The Baugher Student Center (BSC), Nicarry and Hackman Apartments are the areas on campus where students experience the most difficulties with the Wi-Fi, according to the survey.
“Whenever I leave a building it still tries to stay connected to the [Wi-Fi], but then loads extremely slowly…,” one anonymous student reported.
Another anonymous student described the connection as “very slow and temperamental.”
Overall, student replies to the survey have a common theme: the Wi-Fi has been slow to connect or load and has disconnected at inconvenient times.
“Wi-Fi should be a top priority for the school in order to allow students to use their devices to learn and relax,” a third anonymous student stated.
While perhaps ITS’ choice to change providers was intended to make the Wi-Fi less of a hassle for students, the problems students have faced so far during the school year suggests more work needs to be done.
Some issues, such as constantly having to connect to Wi-Fi when entering a new building or opening a laptop, are issues because of their inconvenience. It can be frustrating to have to wait for the Wi-Fi to connect and internet browsers to load, especially if a student is in class. Other issues can be even more disruptive to schoolwork.
When a student is connected to the Wi-Fi but has no internet connection, there isn’t much they can do on their laptops unless they have a personal hotspot or other solution. For students who lose Wi-Fi connections in the middle of research or a project, they may also lose valuable work if they didn’t have enough warning to save what they were doing.
Additionally, slow internet speeds are a tedious problem, keeping students from following along to presentations in real time or completing in-class activities in a timely manner.
While these complaints have been heard consistently around campus,with posts on the Jay’s App and through verbal complaints, 69.6 percent of respondents to the survey had not reached out to ITS about their issues with the Wi-Fi. Several students reported using alternate solutions or are simply tolerating difficulties, instead of bringing this to the attention of ITS.
With this in mind, one can understand why many of these issues have remained unresolved. If students don’t take advantage of ITS support or find a way to let ITS know there have been consistent issues, they can’t do anything about it or communicate with the new provider.
From the results of this week’s Weekly Chirp survey, it’s obvious that many students have been experiencing a variety of Wi-Fi problems. At the same time, however, few students seem to be bringing this to the attention of our ITS team.
With more communication, hopefully this issue can be resolved in the near future.
