My College Did Me Dirty
 

Just wanted to take a moment to vent some frustrations. I live in the dorms at my college. Everyone in every dorm, including mine, has internet access. Except, of course, my floor. It's been out for around a month now. So everytime i need/want to d/l something i have to do it here at work and burn it to a cd. Which is a real pain b/c i cant use apt-get and make sure i get all the dependencies and everything. Oh yeah, and they're not giving me a discount on my rent. :mad:

See if you can convince one of your dorm friends on a nearby floor put up a wireless AP... ;)

Cable snaked through heat vent or open window. ;)

Contact the dean of students and explain that the university's lack of action on fixing this issue is preventing you from accessing the academic materials you *need* for your studies, and that you are concerned that you are paying full tuition fees but only getting a partial educational experience. If your professors have posted documents that you need to download because they will be on an upcoming test, that makes it even more urgent.

If they suggest that you can just use a computer in a different location to do those downloads, my response would be "Yes, I can do that, but suppose the tables were turned, and instead of me calling you because my Internet access was down, you were calling me because the phone line in your home was down -- would you consider it an acceptable answer to be told "just use somebody else's phone to make your calls?"

If it's been down for a month that's unacceptable. Clearly it would be unreasonable to expect instant turnaround, but I think unless there is some kind of emergency sitaution (hurricanes, floods, earthquakes, etc) then a 3 business day window is plenty. Just my 2 cents -- J.W.

Yeah, i think it's time to talk to the dean. I've tried to get housing to fix it many times w/ no results.. We shall see..

edit: and i would run a cable through a window, but they don't trust us w/ our own lives enough to put windows that open in the rooms. And, more importantly, i just dont think i should have to. I called housing one last time to try and see what the deal was and they said they havent been able to get ahold of the IT guy for our dorm and they refuse to let me look in the room where the switch and everything is kept. :mad:

im surprised its lasted this long yeah talk to the dean/president of the school. Worse comes to worse you could always threaten a lawsuit at their ability to fail to provide the proper academic enviroment to insure a proper colelge education and failing to deliver what you are paying them for.

I really wish i had internet so i could actually play on my linux box and be online at same time.. hard to ask ?s from work and then try to fix when i get home.. ARG!

You dont have windows that open in your rooms ???
so what happens if there is a fire ???
what - you all get fried
I would be talking to someone about that
surely thats a breach of building regulations

Speaking as a volunteer fireman
I find your situation scary

live long and prosper
floppy

Talk to one of the maintenance personel and see if they will let you in. What are the other people on your floor doing about it? You should march on the presidents office and demand some sort of resolution.

At the university where I work, the windows will only open part way, and they are pretty small to help in case of a fire. The firefighters would be able to break a big enough area to rescue someone in an emergency. They do provide a number of stairwells for this situation though. Might be a problem were you are from, but here in the US, it is different.

Stairwells are useless if they are choked full of smoke. I would accept your argument if we were talking multi-storied ( ie more than 3 ) buildings.

Most people that die in building fires die of smoke inhalation ! And in a building fire - that can happen very quickly. I wouldnt count on firemen to recue me or mine in such an event, thats why you should have evacuation plans.
And regular drills if you live on campus.

If you get the royal run-around talking to your college people about this then ring your local fire dept to get the truth. Dont make any assumptions about this.

quote
Might be a problem were you are from, but here in the US, it is different.

sincerely I doubt that, fire and building regulations are pretty similar the world over, at least the western world. When I was at college here, they had two fire / evac drills per year. If they dont do it where you are then you should mention the potential legal liabilities in the event of something unpleasant. useful leverage ! but get your facts straight first.

floppy

Just to chime in again, if you ask me this really is not the sort of problem that a student should be forced to resolve on his/her own. This clearly is the responsibility of the university, and they've had plenty of time to deal with it but have ignored the issue thus far.

As they say, the squeaky wheel gets the grease, so definitely let them know that they need to boost the priority on this ticket. You might consider calling them back every day to check on the latest progress update - on the first day, call once, on the second day, twice, on the third day, 3 times, etc. If you really want to play hardball, you can do what my friend's grandfather did: this guy was in his 80's, and needed to take his car in for a basic oil change and lube job. They told him it would be done by the end of the day; it wasn't. When it wasn't done by about noon of the second day, the old guy called back and asked to speak to the manager, who was "in a meeting", so he left a mesage. The old guy called back towards the end of the second day, and after being told again that the manager was "in a meeting" and still unavailable, left another message demanding a return by the end of the day. There was still no response, so the next morning the old guy called back and just told them that he wasn't willing to get the run around anymore. He pointed out that as a retired guy, he had *a lot* of extra time on his hands, and that if he couldn't talk to the manager *right now*, he and about 5 or 6 of his other retired buddies would spend the rest of the day doing nothing except calling their number, which of course meant that anyone else trying to reach them would get a busy signal. Amazingly, after being put on hold for about 30 seconds, the manager suddenly was available.

The point is, don't be obnoxious about it, but make it very clear to them that you do not consider it acceptable for them to continue to ignore this issue, and that it is their responsibility to make things right. Good luck with it -- J.W.

Yeah, I was talking to one of the women I work with. Turns out her Bro-in-law is the Dean of Students at my College. Lucky Me :) She said he's on vac. til Jan 3. but She'll call him for me and tell him about it and that i want to speak with him when he returns.

The heat would cause toxens to emit from the cat5e cable. Don't be stupid.

DO NOT put cat5e cable down a heating vent.

What about drilling a hole through my floor and running the cable to the folks who live below me.. I'm sure if i told housing i was going to it might at least get some reaction from them.

That would be fine...

But do make sure you know what you are doing before drilling.. I mean, this would be one of the thing you measure twice drill once... so to speak.

Also you might want to make the hole as small as possible, and that can be hidden from sight in both rooms... RAs don't take kindly to holes and cables everywhere -- and it could get you in major shit too.

Make sure you don't bend the network cable to much...

Oh, and read up on some basic network cable running... you might want to make a 'speedway' for the part that passes through the floor to prolong the cable's life.