Since the Student Government Association’s (SGA) release of the Point Park Wi-Fi survey, Marc Palombo, president of SGA, has been in close contact with Tim Wilson, associate vice president of IT to fix the issue.
Before the Wi-Fi survey, IT was only aware of the few connection issues that students reported to the IT Help Desk since PioneerNet has been offered campus-wide.
Julianne Bailey, fall 2022 SGA graphic designer, previously said to The Globe last December that the university purchased the hospitality access points to “amplify” Wi-Fi connection but were unable to install them.
“According to Wilson, the boxes were already supposed to be installed,” Bailey said. “The reason why Wi-Fi is the way it is, is because they’re not paying for it; Because we’re supposed to have PioneerNet.”
Two semesters later, PioneerNet is being offered, but some students complain that the connection is worse than the previous year.
According to Wilson, currently, each resident hall room has its own hospitality-style access point, so the issue is not entirely a signal issue.
“We are willing to add these where needed. I believe most of the issue was because of a configuration problem when a patch/update was supplied to the system,” Wilson said.
Out of 234 student responses on the Point Park Wi-Fi survey, 98% of the students experienced issues.
Junior dance major Kaia Johnson experienced issues logging onto the Wi-Fi in the first four weeks of classes before the issue was solved.
“With the Wi-Fi in the beginning of the year I would log on and it would immediately log me out,” Johnson said.
Sophomore Isabel Mincy, a musical theater major, has mostly experienced Wi-Fi issues when she is inside other buildings that are not the Playhouse. For the most part she said that PioneerNet is functioning for her.
“I think it’s just an issue with logging in, that it asks for their login a bunch of times and then it doesn’t actually log them in,” Mincy said.
Mincy has faith in IT and the university’s ability to fix the issue.
“I’ve been to the IT desk a few times with my own computer and they seem pretty equipped to help us out,” Mincy said.
Since then it has improved, Johnson did not blame the problem on IT and has had positive interactions with them in the past.
”The only thing I’ve noticed as of now is there can be lag time with the Wi-Fi,” Johnson said. “IT, whenever I have reached out to them they have been very helpful and very on top of it, I think if students know to go there they’ll be able to help.”
The IT Help Desk is open Monday through Thursday in Thayer Hall 220 8:30 a.m. to 10:30 p.m. and varying times on the weekends. They can be reached at [email protected] or their phone number 412-392-3494.
