Wireless internet access at Georgetown can be hard to come by. In an effort to pressure the University into speeding up effort to improve wireless, Georgetown’s Interhall Residence Council has released a survey that they expect will voice student concerns about internet connectivity.
“The more students say we want wireless, the sooner we will reap the benefits,” Interhall President Paul Biedlingmaier said.
Director of University Information Services Beth Ann Bergsmark said that UIS will only continue to install wireless in campus buildings that lack connectivity as the University has the funds.
“I think our priorities would be the rest of residence halls without wireless access,” she said, noting that only New South and the Southwest Quad have full wireless access. “But you really do need to do an entire building at a time, and in some older buildings, you’re talking about replacing an entire old infrastructure. (fernandez-vega.com) ”
Emma Smith (COL `09) is one of many students who has found herself frustrated with the state of Georgetown’s wireless.
“I’m from a small town and our entire downtown area has wireless. And I feel like if a crazy small town in Washington can figure it out …” she said.
Bergsmark said that the University is not waiting until it has the funds to blanket campus with wireless to undertake new wireless projects, but that UIS is constantly in talks with University leaders to discuss where funding will allow the University to install wireless next.
But Biedlingmaier questions where wireless lies as a University priority.
“I think in their mind somewhere wireless is on the agenda, but it’s not on the top of their agenda,” he said. “When you have a meeting with [the administration], I don’t think they’re too responsive.”
Wireless access will be a part of current and upcoming building projects, University spokesperson Julie Green Bataille wrote in an email. The new McDonough School of Business building will be equipped with wireless access and the planned science building will have wireless connectivity when it is completed.
According to Bataille, the University is working “to enable wireless access to be installed in remaining residence halls and academic buildings, but there has not been a specific time line developed for this work to occur.”
Budget concerns, she said, are the primary cause of Georgetown’s lack of campus-wide wireless access.
And according to Bergsmark, UIS probably won’t have an idea of which building they will target next until the spring. In the meantime, UIS has installed wireless access in the common rooms of Copley, Darnall, and other residence hals. But for Smith, who said she frequently has trouble accessing wireless even in class buildings, such as Walsh, this doesn’t seem like enough.
“For a school so intent on being a school for the future, this is a problem,” she said.
