Addressing recurring Wi-Fi issues, Point Park’s United Student Government (USG) invited Dr. Tim Wilson, Assistant Vice President of Information Technology (IT) and Will Elmes, Director of IT Security and Operations, for a follow up to last semester’s meeting with Wilson regarding student installed Wi-Fi routers.
Following the initial meeting last semester, IT conducted a formal survey throughout campus looking at Wi-Fi strength to put in Wi-Fi access points and conducted campaign to remove home Wi-Fi routers.
“We [IT] were very aggressive as to a marketing campaign and a media campaign…as to move the issues caused by people bringing in their own Wi-Fi access points into their rooms, running time and the interference caused,” Dr. Wilson said during the meeting.
Prior to Monday’s meeting, USG created and promoted an anonymous survey through SurveyMonkey asking questions regarding student interactions with school Wi-Fi following the removal of home routers.
According to SurveyMonkey data, in a group of 100 students, 91 percent still reported problems with school Wi-Fi. With this same group of 100, 44 percent cited “frequently” as the rating to how often they experience Wi-Fi drop offs from options of never, occasionally, sometimes, frequently and always.
To this, Wilson and Elmes stressed reporting issues to IT in the most specific fashion as possible.
“If you’re in your room and it [the Wi-Fi] just drops off, that concerns me,” Elmes said. “If we knew when you walked down this hallway out here you dropped off twice, sure we can address something like that by adding some more access points in.”
Addressing the complication students faced last semester while registering, Dr. Wilson described the issue as “severely a load issue kind of thing.”
“We had a situation where the timeline for registration was collapsed down which put a lot more people trying to register at the same time,” Dr. Wilson said. “This time around, you’re going to experience an expanded registration period.”
Using the crash as learning experience, IT continues to work with the Registrar’s Office for a more stable registration timetable to avoid a complete shutdown/crash of PointWeb, which occurred last semester.
In regards to the more recent issue of users with Windows 10 or Lollipop version 5.1.1 on PC and Android devices struggling to log into the PointPark802.1X Wi-Fi, Elmes offered a solution.
“Since late November, early December, Microsoft released – a security update ‑our Wi-Fi vendor has yet to get caught up with,” Elmes said. “However, there is a workaround but it’s manual that you have to implement…You have to probably email or speak to the Help Desk directly.”
The next step USG plans to take involves a formal survey requesting students to be more precise with their responses and issues.
USG also followed up with budget business from last meeting, allocating a $500 budget to Theatre Club to meet deposits for COPA Prom rather than keeping its budget at the original $483 recommended by the Finance Committee or allocating the full amount requested. Theatre Club originally requested $3,100, but submitted a late budget request resulting in a tabled budget last meeting.
The Society for Intelligence and National Security also submitted a late budget request, but since its budget was sent back to Finance Committee last meeting, the organization had the option to have its budget fully reviewed and received $2,770—up from the original $483 recommended.
In addition, USG coordinated with Student Activities, Involvement and Leadership (SAIL) for the SAIL Showdown this week by stressing the importance of reaching out to the student body.
“We want to continue our efforts [for] the student body [to] reach out,” president Blaine King said to the legislative body.
In part with this, USG is working on its social media communications, as well as its different spring semester projects, such as a Forum in March 18, and Pioneer Community Day set for April 2.
