Double fail

In the time since I have downloaded it, the University’s Doublemap Bus Tracker app has worked a grand total of once.

It’s not that it doesn’t show me where the buses are. It just doesn’t track them.

Every time I pull it up it manages to sputter along just enough to create the general area of where the bus might be soon or has just been.

In order for me to track anything on it, I must close and open the app repeatedly, and nine times out of 10 I’m greeted with a loading spinner.

Other times I receive a notification that the buses are not running — as I watch a bus pull away from me because I just missed it.

Or it will suddenly force quit, as if the burden of being itself is just too much to bear.

Now, I’m generally go-with-the-flow, so much so that occasionally I feel like I should check my own pulse. I can put up with a dysfunctional app as long as it does at least a little bit of its job.

But when the entire IU Mobile app crashes on me, that’s when I want to scream. I have had to uninstall and reinstall it more times than I can count.

I feel like this all goes back to my complaints about the construction jobs, the problems with the VOICE report and the issues raised by the strike.

It’s like no one cares. I’m not entirely sure if I blame the tech department for the app’s problems. After all, they are funded by the University.

We get thrown scraps and are expected to act in awe of the benevolence of our administration.

It’s like a micro-scale version of everyone’s problems. We are given a buggy, technologically unsound app, and we are supposed to be satisfied.

We are given shoddy policies and a rickety student government infrastructure and supposed to be grateful.

I, for one, am sick of it. I’m sick of being ignored, I’m sick of being woken up at 8 a.m., I’m sick of being fearful of stepping on administration’s toes and I’m sick of this god-awful bus tracking app.

We need to establish a student voice that isn’t afraid of pushing the administration, of working with the University to create an environment that students feel comfortable in and listened to.

This is an important time. We can either seize the opportunity to evoke some serious change or wave at it as it passes by.

I, for starters, would just like to catch a bus.

­— ewenning@indiana.edu