Juliana Gonzalez | Staff Writer
Many students signed the petition for better internet after struggling in their remote classes. Now Florida Tech is taking action to improve their network problems.
“In classes I would be disconnected at least once a day,” Chloe Church, a freshman majoring in biomedical science at Florida Tech, said. “It made assignments very hard. I couldn’t do homework sometimes because I kept getting booted off.”
Executive Vice President, Marco Carvalho, coordinated with the IT group last fall to find the problem in Florida Tech’s network.
“There were different factors that contributed to the issues observed with our wireless infrastructure,” Carvalho said in an emailed response. He explained that the main problems are hardware failures.
According to Carvalho, Florida Tech network users can still experience network issues because the college is currently working on hardware replacements.
So far, students should be able to notice a change in several residence halls to 5G, an increase in access points across campus, and an improvement in the cell tower connection, according to Carvalho.
The petition sent out last fall by Truman Davis for better Wi-Fi has currently been signed 922 times and the number is still climbing. The petition has been acknowledged by Carvalho, and he discussed it with Florida Tech’s administrative and technical team.
“I applaud the initiative and engagement of our students on this issue,” Carvalho said.
“Technology is not perfect, and we have to deal with that and recognize that it is not always going to work the way we want it to,” Heidi Hatfield Edwards, the associate head of Florida Tech’s School of Arts and Communication, said.
“I’ve noticed that it’s been better, at least from my experience.” Edwards said. “Anecdotally, I can’t speak for everyone but in our class, it seems to be working much better.”
Having a reliable internet is important for both students and faculty members, especially in the current situation of dealing with COVID-19.
“COVID-19 greatly accelerates our dependency on networks, and there is no doubt that this is a trend that will continue,” Carvalho said in an emailed response.