Time to catch up

The cry that Princeton has fallen behind other universities and therefore must catch up in a given area is not sufficient grounds for strong, ameliorative action. Certainly this sensible logic informed the many decisions made in the last century against establishing a law school.

Yet this point of wisdom should not be applied to the mediocre state of Princeton's information technology infrastructure. That we are light ages behind Dartmouth, for example, matters not because we might lose some prospective students to Dartmouth, but because information technology is now a central and necessary part of the educational experience — no less than library access or dining options. Dartmouth has done right by its students, and Princeton must do the same.

Much of the problem lies in the way our system is structured. Both dining and library access are centralized in departments which are directly funded by the University and have complete authority to do what is best for their narrowly-defined interests. The Office of Information Technology (OIT), though symbolically in charge of information technology on campus, is not the direct recipient of much of the funding required for providing access to the network. Instead, any improvements to the campus network, both wired and wireless, have to be initiated and funded by the various departments on campus.

This explains why so many Ethernet jacks in dorms are turned off and why we were so late in receiving wireless access in those very same dorms. It is the Housing Department's prerogative, both administrative and financial, to pay OIT to turn on Ethernet jacks and to support the development of a wireless infrastructure in dorms.

The solution is to fund OIT directly and give it total control over networking on campus. We support decoupling the Dormnet computing fee from the student payment to the Housing Office and sending that money directly to OIT as an integrated student computing fee. Instead of the University giving funds to the departments that are then paid to OIT, the University should reallocate those funds directly to OIT, who should then use the funds to improve, among other things, the poor coverage of wireless Internet on campus. These changes would empower technology professionals — and not departmental administrators with little technology expertise or vision — to make the appropriate technology decisions for our campus.