Oswego State, as a community is reliant on the campus’ wireless connection, this is not a surprise. From teachers, to students, to clubs, WiFi binds together our courses, busywork and extracurriculars. Without it, we are essentially down for the count.
Recently, Spectrum has failed to deliver, miserably. Starting early February, with a whole blackout, Spectrum’s wireless connectivity has been spotty. Customers from Maine to downstate New York experienced the blackout and, of course, Spectrum jumped to fix it. Successfully, it seems, for everyone but Oswego State. The number of “wireless connection failure,” “Intermittent Network Availability” and “Off-Campus Login Issue” emails we have received this semester is unbelievable. No matter if your classes are solely on-campus, off-campus or online, an Internet or network outage will negatively affect your semester, be it by grades or stress. An enormous amount of work is submitted online, even in on-campus classes. There is no hiding that a majority of college students procrastinate until the last day, or even wait to hand in work that is done, and not being able to hand in your work is devastating.
Of course, professors will often come back with “well you should not have waited until the last minute,” or “that’s why the due date is given in advance.” That is a fair statement, to a professor. Students have upwards of four or more classes to worry about and complete work in, it is not always emotionally logical to make sure everything is done in advance. To be able to achieve having your work done for one—let alone five—classes takes an immense amount of dedication, planning and perfection. Punishing a student because their work was not handed in early and they could not hand it in on time because of network issues is unfair and just adds more stress.
The WiFi connection this semester has been abysmal. It has never been great, but the accuracy and reliability this semester is disappointing and stressful for students. We should not have to worry about getting work done and in early because our WiFi connection might fail us just in the nick of time and cost us a grade point. Not all professors are forgiving or understanding when it comes to Internet connection problems, and not all students can afford to miss assignments because of poor connection. As a campus that depends on the Internet as much as ours does, we should be disappointed about the failure of our connection as of late.
Graphic by Patrick Higgins | The Oswegonian
