At the beginning of the school year, Augustana students and faculty received an email from ITS about the new AC1 Wi-Fi network, a supposedly new and improved campus Wi-Fi. Other campus networks were said to disappear over the fall semester, which recently happened to students on Dec. 5.
The current path of the ITS department aims to make campus resources inaccessible on alternate Wi-Fi networks, including SSIDs OpenAugieWi-Fi, GuestsofAugustana and GameConsolesAC. Augustana should still allow students to access campus resources on Wi-Fi other than AC1.
On Nov. 29, an email from ITS reminded students and faculty that AugieWi-Fi(Secured) would shut down on Monday, December 4. The other networks would host “internet traffic only,” according to the student bulletin, meaning campus resources will only be accessible through AC1 and future networks.
The internet is unreliable as is. Further decreasing online campus resources would negatively impact students academically, making them unable to access classwork or register for classes.
All students experience unreliable Wi-Fi in many academic buildings. The residence halls are not much better than anywhere else on campus.
First-Year Andreen residents Makenzie Rusco and Avery Spacek have dealt with Wi-Fi issues the entire semester, especially with the loss of backup Wi-Fi networks.
“I feel like it’s always out when it’s needed, especially in the residence halls or the library, where people do their work the most,” Rusco said.
Andreen residents have received multiple emails throughout the semester about Wi-Fi issues. One was from ITS on Nov. 12, stating that the Wi-Fi was being taken offline temporarily due to “high rates of traffic coming from the Andreen residence hall.”
Another email came from Residential Life on Nov. 27, claiming that Andreen Hall would be without internet until further notice because of “construction equipment accidentally severing the network fiber that provides the internet signal to Andreen.”
Getting rid of alternative Wi-Fi networks for students is a bad idea. AC1 is not enough for students to confidently rely on.
“[The printer] wouldn’t let me print anything [in Andreen] because I was using my hotspot,” Spacek said, “The Wi-Fi was out for four days. We kept getting emails saying it was fixed, but it never was.”
The Wi-Fi issues have only seemed to get worse as the semester goes on, which may be due to the lack of backup networks available to students when AC1 is not working.
Augustana costs a lot of money for many students, and it is unfair for students to have to pay for data and use their hotspots to do classwork. Students should have reliable Wi-Fi that works the majority of the time.
Understandably, Wi-Fi issues come up no matter where you are, but Augustana students suffer from bad Wi-Fi connection daily, creating a poor environment for learning..
Augustana College needs more than one Wi-Fi network available to students because AC1 is unreliable and their academics will suffer without dependable access to online resources.