While many students at SLU are familiar with technological problems stemming from the old printers across campus, the beginning of this academic year was marked by a different set of issues.  Some have dubbed the campus-wide failure of the public printing system and Wi-Fi ‘The Great Outage of 2018.’

A power outage across campus on Sept. 2 increased problems for the wireless systems that were already spotty with connection coverage. Campus saw intermittent issues throughout the remainder of the week with no widespread issues reportedly having been seen since early afternoon on Sept. 7.

Throughout what seemed like an eternity with no internet connection to many students, some turned to alternative solutions in order to complete class readings on time.  Numerous individuals reported having to use cellular data in order to load necessary files. This angered some students, as extra data is not something they typically budget for in expenses for the semester.  As it is expected that the University provides a secure and reliable network in order to provide students with accessibility to the services and resources required for class. Other alternatives included using one of the roughly 350 desktop computers with a direct connection to the internet in different labs and academic buildings across campus.

On the flip side of things, student workers at IT faced backlash from angry students and parents due to the wireless issues. Debby Guterres ’19, a student worker from IT shares her experience as “a student’s father called and complained about the Wi-Fi, telling me his son hadn’t been able to connect to the internet in his dorm located at 62 Park.”  She continued, “he basically was very demanding and rude. I understand it was frustrating, but his son was not the only person who had connection issues. I assured him in my conversation that everyone on campus got the same email from Rene Thatcher that IT was working on solving the issue with the Wi-Fi vendor.”

Many professors have policies prohibiting the use of technology during class, specifically about the use of laptops or other personal computing devices. With the inability to print out necessary readings for class discussions, many professors made exceptions to this rule while IT worked toward a solution.

For other students, however, their biggest concerns were being able to turn in work on time. Juraj Kittler, Associate Professor of Performance and Communication Arts, reported that several of his students were unable to access drafts of their papers or homework for class because they had them saved in the wireless cloud storage system, therefore missing their assignments’ due dates. He stated that while he’s unsure if the University encourages use of the cloud, this is “a new issue we need to take into consideration. I myself, for now, refuse to use cloud storage systems because – just as this situation proved – they jeopardize and compromise the ownership of one’s own work.”

Melanie Marulanda ’22 was 20 minutes late to class after attempting to get help from the workers at IT to print her essay. “There’s no way I could’ve gone to class without it,” she stated after discussing the issue.

For many students, life has returned to normal for the time being, as the network is back up and running. “God bless Rene Thatcher,” stated Quinn Audsley ’20, breathing a sigh of relief as she successfully printed an article for class.