Here in the valley, in a banner year for the College, the superlatively diverse Class of 2004 is one of many much-touted firsts; Amherst reclaimed the number one spot in the U.S. News and World Report college rankings, and then followed up that triumph with a victory on the gridiron, beating Williams for the first time since the elder Bush was vice president; our investments yielded astounding returns; and it looks like James and Stearns will soon be free of triples.
Despite all these memorable achievements, many Amherst students feel that the College remains sorely lacking in an area integral to student (or intellectual) life. The College fared quite poorly in this year's Yahoo! Internet Life "Top 100 Most Wired Colleges" ranking. While rival Williams took first among liberal arts colleges, and both Smith and Mount Holyoke Colleges placed in the top 20 schools, Amherst weighed in at a lowly 99th. Amherst was ranked close behind Concordia College, and just ahead of Nebraska Wesleyan University, whose combined U.S. News "academic reputations" add up to less than Amherst's.
Amherst's 99th place finish should come as no surprise to students who sit and stare at blank screens as even the simplest pages load. Amherst's ranking rose 36 spots from 135 in the '99 rankings; however, liberal arts colleges and universities were not split into separate categories until this year. More telling is the fact that the College's raw score dropped from 62.03 in 1999 to 57.26 in 2000.
Ranked among schools which do not provide Internet access to all student rooms, Amherst has made up some ground, and should fare better in this year's rankings. Wireless networking has just been added last year. All dorm rooms have at least enough connections for their occupants, unlike many schools (locally, UMass comes to mind.)
Amherst was not among the 68 percent of the schools surveyed which offer online registration, but considering the aggravation associated with most such procedures at most schools, this apparent fault could be a blessing in disguise. This fall's online SGO elections went off without a hitch, though, suggesting movement in the right direction.
Though the College's improvements should be commended, we acknowledge that we have a problem with networking. In fact, some believe that the network is one of Amherst's two biggest shortcomings, second only to freshman housing congestion. After blaming our problems on interference from UMass-on whose connection we piggy-back-blocking Napster, issuing warnings to users of automated mail-checkers, and even suggesting that some students had started underground dot-com businesses on the school's network, the school has wisely stopped playing the blame game and begun to upgrade its system.
Blocking Napster was not the magic bullet that the College had hoped for. While the block may have stopped more casual music sharers, more technologically savvy students have found ways to circumvent the lockout-usually in ways that use more bandwidth than a direct connection would. Other programs which eat up bandwidth less obviously, like Download Accelerator, or those that maintain constant connections, such as AOL Instant Messenger, continue to run without restriction.
When I left for break, I brought my computer with me. With no ethernet connection at home, I was amazed when I dialed into my local Internet service provider at 56K and was able to access pages nearly as quickly as when I was on campus. Once back in my dorm room, I found the connection even slower than I had remembered it and I began to yearn for my relatively blazing fast modem line.
Upon returning to campus last weekend, I was greeted by bright, colorful signs introducing the "New Email System." Though the introductory sessions have already come and gone, I look forward to converting my account to the new system. While upperclass plan-junkies mourn the passing of VAX, the change from the antiquated system is long overdue. I'll finally be able to remove the ugly "Shortcut to Telnet" icon from my desktop and replace it with a program copyrighted since my birth.
And now, fast on the heels of the recent giant steps forward, it seems that the information technology department (IT) will be unable to follow through on its promise to realize the long-rumored bandwidth-doubling connection upgrade by the end of February. Instead, because of the bankruptcy of Vitts Networks, the ISP once poised to resolve the school's dilemma, the upgrade may not be completed until the end of the semester. While the proposition of another semester of marathon loading times is aggravating, the circumstances are entirely out of the school's hands and could not have been foreseen. While IT clamors to find another solution, we're left to putter along on the information superhighway in K-cars, while our Five-College brothers and sisters motor by in SUVs.
Though we fall short-in some cases far short-of the levels achieved by rival schools, as college students, we often lose sight of how much of a luxury an internet connection, at any speed, sometimes is. The Boston Globe recently reported that only 54 percent of American households contain personal computers. Of those, many have no Internet access. While we may complain that we cannot find a copy of Duran Duran's latest single on mp3, many don't even have an email address. Many families cannot afford the thousand-dollar investment that even a modest setup costs, let alone the monthly fees.
We at Amherst have more connections than students, and probably more computer terminals than some small towns in Massachusetts. While our connection is mediocre by comparison, Internet access is an often overlooked luxury.
When we gain our long awaited six-Mb connection, will we remove Napster from the list of websites non grata, only to clog up our lines again? Will Amherst be the home of the next dot-com start-up boom? Will incoming classes be more and more Internet-dependent? Will we still threaten to transfer if the school doesn't give us faster access to our favorite pirated DVDs? We must, at some point, stop trying to keep up with the Joneses (or the Ephs, in this case,) and be content with what we have, even though it may be far from perfect.