According to some students, the University of Tampa doesn’t have the best wireless Internet connection on campus. This has caused the Academic Affairs Committee in Student Government to go so far as writing a resolution to be presented to the Student Government Senate, advocating for an update in the campus Wi-Fi service.
Becky Vaclav, Academic Affairs Committee Chair, put together the resolution along with a group of leaders from different organizations. Their ultimate goal is to have more wireless routers on campus, “giving access to UT’s Wireless option to more students in more places,” as said in the resolution.
They also list examples of how the Wi-Fi has failed some students while trying to submit assignments because of a weak or nonexistent connection.
Vaclav said, “They wouldn’t be able to finish their assignments on time and professors didn’t want to deal with people blaming it on the Internet, because they didn’t think it was true. But really it’s just that the Internet fails sometimes when you’re trying to finish things, so it was a big concern for a lot of individuals.”
A couple of these assignments included using Blackboard to submit quiz results and paper submissions, and Skype to hold off-campus classes during the time of the RNC.
Since fall 2012 the Office of Information Technology Help Desk has received approximately 20 reports about issues with the Wi-Fi. Donna Alexander, Vice President for Information Technology said, “all [the problems] were resolved by directing students to connect to, UoT_Secure, the encrypted UT Campus Wireless Network.”
She also said that devices that are not permitted on campus could be to blame, “Reported incident investigations determined there has been numerous unauthorized wireless devices in close proximity causing the problem.”
The University is equipped with Wi-Fi in over 500 locations on campus. These places include the residence halls, all classrooms, common areas with seating, outside areas with seating, Martinez Sports Center, Athletic press boxes/stands, and the MacDonald- Kelce Library.
The only places where Wi-Fi is not available are parking garages, administrative and academic offices, and outdoor areas without seating.
Not all the problems that students have are academic related though; some students try to use the Wi-Fi for entertainment purposes.
Krista Harty, senior, since moving to Res Com has had difficulty using the Wi-Fi, “It sometimes doesn’t work in my room and when it does it’s usually really slow. Also in ResCom, Netflix doesn’t work on the Wii like it did in Straz.”
Senior Chelsea Wulff, who also lives in Res Com, has similar difficulties. “If you want to watch a TV show on your laptop, you need to use your Ethernet cord unless you want to buffer every couple of seconds. For Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest it is OK but the Ethernet works so much faster. Basically, I rarely use my Wi-Fi,” she said.
The Wi-Fi is also known to be slow occasionally in other dorms such as Vaughn, according to freshman Brooke Collins. “On the 7th floor for the most part the Wi-Fi is good and it works well, but sometimes it will act up and make the Internet very slow,”she said.
Vaclav and her committee hope that their resolution will eventually be seen by the Dean of Students and the IT Department. They will first present to the Student Government Senate for Debate on Tues. February 19.
Caroline Metell can be reached at cmetell@spartans.ut.edu