Aantorik Ganguly ’19, Amanda Turner ’19
On April 30th, students and faculty were struggling to get any work done on campus as the Wi-Fi connection timed out. Will Forbes, the Technical Services Coordinator, explained, “As far as I understand it, the wifi issue happened because of a 10-year limit that Cisco has on their devices. Our access points were installed in 2007 and the campus opened in 2008, so we hit that policy.” The process for fixing the issue became increasingly difficult because the internet would only work in certain rooms and departments. Head of Upper School Mike Letts stated, “We knew that certain rooms were okay, certain rooms were not, so I was in the process of soliciting the faculty to say, who needs internet access, and possibly shifting rooms.”
The problem continued for weeks until it was permanently resolved the week of May 7th. Initially, the technology department created a temporary resolve, but that fix only exposed more serious issues. Eventually, Forbes and his team were able to come up with a permanent solution, and Episcopal is now in the process of an infrastructure upgrade to improve our wireless devices over the summer.
There was no communication between administration and students regarding the technology issues, which angered many students. James LeRoux ‘19 said, “While it is understandable that there will be technological problems, it is not okay for administration to leave students in the dark.” Students complained about not being able to plan their work because they were unsure about when the wifi connection would come back. Harry Pusey ‘19, who often studies and works on campus, said, “It was very difficult for me to get any work done without any internet. Especially with the new schedule this year, I have been doing a lot of work at school. Without any communication from administration, I had no idea when things would start working again, which made it really difficult for me to plan my work.”
Letts explained that “there’s not” a reason students were left in the dark regarding the technology issues. “It’s just my mistake. I should have said something. It wasn’t intentional in any way. You just get into the throes of it and I started to try and problem solve.” Letts recognized the importance of informing students and said “[Students] need to know. It’s as much your community as it is ours and that just falls to me to make sure that it doesn’t happen again.”
While there was no communication between administration and students, the faculty was informed about the problems. Steven Schuh, Upper School History teacher, said, “I don’t remember exactly when we got it, but there was an email that went out that said that we were having internet issues.” The communication between faculty and administration was not all positive, however, as Letts comments on the complaints from faculty. Letts said, “I even got some blowback, rightfully so, from the faculty. Because you kind of forget – I was okay down here and the office suite down here was good – so I was trying to solve problems and make sure people are up and running with everything. While there may be no update, it is important to say ‘I’m sorry there is no update.’ It was certainly not intentional; it was just my oversight.”
There is now confirmation that the Wi-Fi problem is currently fixed. Letts and the rest of the administration recognize that they could have done a better job with informing the rest of the community, and they plan on improving transparency for the future.