SCREEN LIFE Good Connections

SCREEN LIFE Good Connections

notebook

CAMPUS

notes from, around the green

Students succeed in push for expanded wi-fi coverage.

Thanks to an effort by members of student government, the College will expand campus wi-fi to cover more outdoor spaces. First up: the Green. The Covid pandemic drove students outside more often, and many of them want to get their schoolwork done while hanging out on the Green or Baker lawn. Coverage has been spotty.

Chief technology officer Felix Windt says demand for outdoor wi-fi has been building for the past 10 years and that other venues such as Tuck Mall, the area around the life sciences building, and even the Bema eventually could be covered. (Sporting venues are not included in the expansion.) For now, he hopes the Green has wi-fi no later than September, when the class of2027 arrives on campus. “There’s a lot of digging to be done,” he says. Access points costing about $10,000 apiece will be attached to existing lightposts around the Green. Each point will connect to a nearby building and offer wi-fi to roughly 40 users.

The approximate $250,000 cost for all outdoor wi-fi will be offset by canceling access to Xfinity On Campus television. Some TV-loving students are dismayed, but Windt says the

The overall wireless infrastructure of the campus has been significantly upgraded during the past several years to support up to 50,000 tablets, laptops, phones, watches, and other devices a day.

Xfinity service gets little use compared to wi-fi and notes there are other, less-expensive ways to access television on campus.

Windt adds that the overall wireless infrastructure of the campus has been significantly upgraded during the past several years to support up to 50,000 tablets, laptops, phones, watches, and other devices a day. Wi-fi rules: His workers now disconnect network jacks after two years of no one plugging in. Wi-fi is now treated by the College as a utility, with funding “in perpetuity,” says Windt, to keep up with technological progress. For example, wi-fi access points will be upgraded every five years, in accordance with industry standards. Students need wi-fi just as they need water, heat, and electricity. In fact, Windt wonders whether some undergrads, given the choice to go without water or wi-fi for a week, would choose networking over washing. Fortunately, no one will face that decision anytime soon.

Sean Plottner

MJUAHJNBI

‘We never had these statues in my undergraduate days but I’ve worked on 24 of them now.”

-PRESIDENT JOHN SLOAN DICKEY, CLASS OF 1929

“As usual, the Winter Carnival center-of-campus ice statue was nowhere near completion and the Carnival Council was levying its annual threat to tear the half-built monster down unless undergraduates showed some gear and did some work. The voice in the wilderness didn't fall on deaf ears, and Monday night before Carnival a number of overage but gearful men of Dartmouth filled their wheelbarrows and buckets full of snow.

The example of the administrators didn't escape the students, who put in enough time to finish the statue—though just barely.”

From the March 1969 issue of DAM

NORTH CAMPUS

397

Student housing units proposed for Lyme Road

CLASS OF 2027

19

%

Record-low early admission rate for 578 students accepted

OUCH

%

-3.1

College

endowment return for fiscal 2022

SECRET GARDEN

Emma Borchers '26 takes in the blooming orchids at the life sciences greenhouse on a gray January day.