Decisions Decisions

One of the greatest things about the new campus is all the amazing technology we are supposed to have. Mass Communication labs are equipped with brand new MAC computers. Students should be able to learn Quark, Dream Weaver and Adobe Photoshop to name a few.

But they don’t really need Internet do they?

I was working in the computer lab late Sunday night. I clicked on the Firefox button, and not surprisingly the browser told me I was not connected to the internet. I turned to the lab assistant and asked him if the internet was up.

“The network is up,” he said. “You have to restart your computer so that it can pick up the connection.”

Now I’m no computer science major but that didn’t sound right. I asked him why? What changes when I restart the computer?

“When AUC moved to the new campus they bought a program named Tunnel Guard,” he said. “You can find the little icon for it on the Windows computers. It’s not compatible on the MAC computers though. So it doesn’t tunnel the internet properly onto the MAC computers. Students are getting annoyed because they have to stop working to restart and get online.”

I was shocked. It seems to me when you are building a techonolgy friendly campus, you make sure the software you are using is compatible with ALL the computers on campus, not some.

As my roommate Jasmine put it, “just another bad decision made by AUC, what do you expect?”