As every Wash. U. tour guide knows, there is not universal Wi-Fi technology on campus. There is wireless access on the Danforth Campus, but not in the dorms on the South 40 or the North Side. Prospective freshmen ask if there’s universal Wi-Fi on every tour of Wash. U., and it’s time to let the tour guides answer yes.
The benefits of installing Wi-Fi technology in the residential areas of the University far outweigh the costs. For one, it allows for much greater mobility for students who need to use the Internet. Students are currently confined to the length of their Ethernet cords. So if people want to study in a group, and need Internet access, they’re forced to trek to the library or another computer lab, or just crowd around one computer. However, if there was universal Wi-Fi, students could just grab their laptops and go out into a common hallway or study room, and all be able to look at Telesis, for example. If one student has a desktop, everyone that has a laptop can just go into that one room, and they can still study together. A system reliant on Ethernet does not facilitate this kind of collective studying.
Universal Wi-Fi is also a lot more convenient. With Ethernet, there is just one more cord to get tangled up in all the other cords currently in dorm rooms, and one more cord for the clumsy and not-so-clumsy alike to trip over. Clearly, wireless would solve this problem.
The major concern to implementing universal Wi-Fi would be privacy. Wi-Fi has a reputation for being insecure, and with all the personal information being transferred over the internet, privacy is of utmost concern. However, it is very easy to encrypt these networks to help make them more secure. A password can be required just to access the network, and who is on the network can be regulated by the Media Access Control (MAC) address, which is unique to each computer. Each MAC address would have to be registered with ResTech, and if a MAC address is not registered, it would not be allowed onto the network.
As is the case with pretty much everything on campus, the cost would become an issue. However, it is not expensive to implement universal Wi-Fi. According to a Wired Magazine article published in 2002, it cost Dartmouth $750,000 to make their campus wireless. With an undergraduate student body of 6,000, adding only $10 per semester, the current internet charge would allow the University to totally recoup the costs of installation in only eight years, plus some extra money for network upkeep as well. Moreover, the Wired article reported that Dartmouth made roughly 200 acres wireless, while Wash. U. would only need to equip the South 40 and the North Side with wireless capabilities, and that is closer to 50 than 200 acres, wireless. Furthermore, it is very likely that costs have gone down in the four years since then. The cost of installing universal Wi-Fi would really be minimal for the University.
In the past, it has been argued that a unified technology fee would be a necessary step towards universal Wi-Fi. Student Life does not see how forcing students to pay for dorm phones and cable in addition to internet is necessary for universal Wi-Fi. Instead, with wireless becoming more and more common on college campuses nationwide, and new technologies allowing for even desktop computers to have Wi-Fi, the time is right for the University to get on the boat and make residential areas wireless.