NEW BRIEFS: University Council to meet today in Quad

The September meeting saw the unveiling of Provost Stanley Chodorow's draft of a new student disciplinary charter. But at today's meeting, Council will discuss the agenda for the year's remaining Council meetings, hear committee reports and receive a report on the progress of administrative restructuring efforts, according to an agenda published in yesterday's Almanac. University President Judith Rodin said the Council Steering Committee charged Executive Vice President John Fry with presenting regular reports on the restructuring project. Today's meeting will mark the first such report. Council will also briefly discuss distributing its minutes and agendas over electronic mail, rather than through the University's inter-office mail system. Council meets at 4 p.m. in McClelland Hall in the Quadrangle. The meeting is open to all members of the University community. -- Mike Madden High-speed modem pool back on line The University's new 28.8 kilobaud modem pool was put back on-line yesterday, after a five-day shutdown. The system had been operative for only a month and a half before it crashed. The problem with the newly-installed pool surfaced when a user dialed the server and the system failed to make a complete connection. In this situation, the user would disconnect, thus leaving one of the server's modems tied up. Any person who called later would not be able to connect to that modem. Director of Data Communications and Computing Services Network Engineering and Operations George McKenna said the problem was resolved at 12:45 p.m. yesterday afternoon. Many users have opted to use the new 28.8 kilobaud modem pool, which can be accessed at 573-4777, because it is faster than the 14.4 kilobaud modem pool that had been previously available at 898-0834. The faster modems transfer data at a rate of approximately 50,000 characters per second, while the slower one proceeds at only 25,000 characters per second. McKenna said the recent problem with the 28.8 kilobaud modem pool was unrelated to a similar problem experienced last week. Last Tuesday, a component to the campus Internet server failed, resulting in the loss of user access to the 28.8K modem pool. This malfunction was promptly repaired. -- Keith Blackman