University has room to grow in wireless connectivity

Last April, Intel Corp. was lauding IU as the No. 1 "unwired" campus in the country. We were on the cutting edge of technology, ready to seize the changing world by its throat.\nThis week, Intel loosened our grasp on the future by leaving us off the top-50 list.\nHave we failed? Has our wireless network, a pulsating, beating organism of informational flow, ceased to grow?\nOr is this ranking, like the many before it, bunk?\nThe main reason the list has been shaken up is that Intel included more small schools in this year's survey, which studies universities' overall connectivity percentage and computer-to-student ratios.\nTo be fair, if we're going to dismiss this ranking, we must dismiss them all. If we're going to say Intel's survey is unscientific, spotty and arbitrary, we must admit that Newsweek naming us the "Hottest Big State School" was subjective and gimmicky. \nAn integral reason we slipped so far is our size. Our campus is spread over 3,000 acres, as opposed to 600 for Ball State University. And though we have nearly twice as many access points as the Cardinals (a few more than 1,000 to a few more than 600), we are still five times as large. \nOf the 50 schools on the list this year, 37 of them -- or 74 percent -- claimed to be 100 percent wireless. We are 90 percent wireless, leaving areas like Dunn Meadow, the Arboretum and many dorms outside the network's reach. It's much tougher for us to totally cover the campus than it is for schools we dwarf.\nThat being said, the University should try. \nIf we don't continue to flex and sway with technology, we will become the archaic entity officials say we're not. Instead of debunking every poll, statistic, survey and list that doesn't view us favorably, maybe we should learn from them.\nIf 37 of the top 50 unwired schools can be 100 percent wireless, why can't we? It might take some additional resources, but it will be worth it if we can all plug into the air anywhere, including Dunn Meadow, a place many students go to study on warm days.\nBut while we could take a lesson from the survey, the academic collection of data that declared us technologically unsavvy, we shouldn't make it our sole \nprofessor. \nBecause either the survey is right, and IU has devolved from wireless harbinger to networking dinosaur in one year, or this professor is a little flighty.