Dartmouth has a long and celebrated history of computing. Indeed, the first time I heard of Dartmouth was in my IT class in middle school. My teacher mentioned a tech-savvy college in New Hampshire, equipped with widespread Internet access and its own email protocol. When I visited campus five years later, I found the tour guide’s praises of campus technology quite convincing. Yet I have since realized that Dartmouth’s days at the forefront of campus computing systems are over. We now have a confusing smorgasbord of various services that leave much to be desired.
Much of our campus technology has barely evolved since I first learned of Dartmouth’s computer prowess in 2004. This is evident even as students enroll in the College. Applicants to Dartmouth find out about their admission decisions via Banner Student, an online student information system that is noticeably less user-friendly than the systems of many peer schools. As a student, my attempts to access Banner during the first weeks of freshman fall were frustrated by problems with logging in with my assigned NetID. Until recently, the online course selection service notoriously would not work with Google Chrome, the most popular web browser in the country. The class meetings timetable, as well as health services and the housing portal, are actually hosted on separate websites, rather than on Banner itself. Compared to up-to-date web services, Banner disappoints in design, reliability and ease of use.
The services that Dartmouth does provide no longer reflect the needs and habits of students. Netflix, Hulu and other online TV services are, in my experience, far more popular than DarTV, Dartmouth’s television broadcasting service. DarTV requires an Ethernet cable and a Java application that I have had spotty success using. Connecting alternative services like Apple TV to the campus network is also cumbersome, since only workaround methods can overcome problems with Dartmouth Secure and the Ethernet cable. And then there is the perennial issue of GreenPrint, which surely was once an impressive printing system but now suffers issues both with the software and with the GreenPrint stations themselves. Newer non-Dartmouth services like Google Cloud Print have eased printing from any device and from any location. In comparison, GreenPrint’s intermediate steps and network restrictions make it seem inefficient.
Most frustrating, the technologies that Dartmouth students use most – wireless Internet and email – are a letdown, as well. Firstly, Dartmouth Secure is slow. When I use my iPhone, I often turn off Wi-Fi and resort to my cellular data connection because it is much speedier than Dartmouth Secure. Other schools of comparable size that I have visited have publicly accessible networks faster than Dartmouth Secure, a sentiment echoed in a recent Dartblog post. The Dartmouth Public network is even slower and requires users to log in through a pop-up window each time they connect.
Our email system suffers from its own complications. Blitz on Office 365, one of our few upgraded services, hardly seems like the ideal replacement for the old BlitzMail system, which was written due to the College’s dissatisfaction with available email client options in the 1980s. Blitz Outlook accounts do not integrate easily with mobile devices, and the Microsoft suite is a hassle to use. During Orientation, the computer setup packet touted Microsoft Lync as a way to use Blitz to chat with peers, but it has failed to catch on. Google Apps, used by the rest of the Ivy League, would have been the superior third-party option.
The College should not forget that Dartmouth previously excelled at computing by creating its own solutions rather than following the pack. The recent “BASIC @ 50” event at Dartmouth highlighted how the College changed the nature of computing in 1964 by creating the BASIC programming language. The College should now continue its tradition of innovating computer services, perhaps by putting money and resources into modernizing student technology services. We could also benefit from a reevaluation of the current Blitz setup and an upgrade to our Wi-Fi network to bring faster speeds to campus for everyone, including visitors. Dartmouth has the chance to be a leader in technology once again.
