WESTON GOODWIN
reporter
collegian.editor@tccd.edu
The major internet problems that have been causing students and professors issues at South campus have been fixed
The campus was having problems and equipment issues in classrooms and the Science Building was where students and faculty had the most problems.
Freddie Franco, the IT Coordinator at South Campus, and his team had done all they could when it came to this issue from the very start.
They were like the “middle-man” on this issue, Franco said. “The issue started occurring last semester. From there, we have been waiting on responses from networking,” he said.
Students struggled to do their work on campus because of the lack of a strong internet connection before it was fixed. Including South student Mayra Camarena.
“At first I thought it was my computer, but then I noticed it kept happening,” Camarena said. “I would be connected but then all of a sudden I would try to open or refresh a page to connect to canvas and then my internet would just go out… That’s very frustrating, especially if you’re in class taking notes, to have a disconnection.”
She said that due to these outages she would have to turn off her wireless connection on her phone and instead use her cell service, which would rack up her phone bill..
“It’s not a very good resource for me, because I’m having to pay out of my pocket for my phone bill, and it uses up all of my data,” Camarena said. “I don’t like to do that because it costs me more money in the end, when that resource should be available for me here at school.”
Other students have noticed issues regarding the Wi-fi, and it even affected their in-class experiences.
“I have had times where I try to connect to canvas and it says ‘site can’t be reached’ kind of like it’s a blocked site. Just now, we were trying to pull up our slides for one of our projects and the computer said it was offline.” Laura Leatham, another South Campus student said. “There’s a class where I have to use my laptop, and pull up and download stuff and it doesn’t work.”
Leatham and Camarena both found themselves working at locations other than the school because of the internet problems.
Professors in the building have had problems with their in-class equipment and internet access as well.
The IT department has a plan, and it’s like a cycle of replacing different pieces of equipment every year, Stacey Metzler, a professor who teaches in the Science Building at South Campus said.
“They can’t deviate from it if someone like me complains,” she said.
The biggest issues were with video streaming and the Wi-Fi connection, according to Metzler.
“It is absolutely critical, everybody uses some form of technology to do many things in their life,” she said when asked how important it is for students to have access to the internet.
Metzler said the science building should be the best when it comes to technology.
“Because we’re science, we should be the pinnacle, the building that works the best,” she said. “We need to do better for our students.”
Franco and his team understand that because of some buildings’ structure, the signal still may not be perfect.
“We have to be aware that some buildings have metal beams that don’t let the signal come into the building properly,” he said.
