LETTERS: ITA program review lacked context

To the Editor: As a faculty member, I am delighted so many students were up and running by the time classes began. The extraordinary achievement and effort of the 140 information technology advisors who put in long hours during and after move-in deserve to be honored before any nit-picking begins. The ITAs who work in the program are students, not professionals. The program puts a lot of people in the houses, at all hours of day and night, at student wages (which we can afford) rather than professional salaries (we could never afford so many people or pay them the overtime to work the nights). So the ITAs aren't perfect. But it's worth emphasizing that every ITA has back-up. There are full-time professional computing experts working with every house that has ITAs, and the ITAs are trained to refer to them problems they can't solve themselves. Those professionals have also worked heroic hours over the last few months to make this possible. The commitment of the program remains to find the solution to every problem we face. If you live in a college or first-year house with ITAs, you've got a service second literally to none in the country. If your problem doesn't get solved instantly, keep after us: our team will be there for you. James O'Donnell Classical Studies Professor Faculty Master, Hill College House Vice Provost, Information Systems and Computing u To the Editor: So far the DP's coverage of the new Residential Computing Support project misleadingly suggests the project has not achieved its goal of providing students with local ("at home") computing support better and faster than ever. It has done so, dramatically. Last year 38 percent of the students living in wired (ResNetted) college houses or first-year houses had made the network connection in their rooms -- were using e-mail and doing their coursework from their on-campus homes -- by the first weekend of the term. This year, because of this project, 55 percent of these students had made the connection by last weekend. And that doesn't count students who don't own computers to network. At this point, beyond the nearly 2000 students whom the student information technology advisors have helped make the connection, there are some whose computers don't connect to our network easily. These problems, which are inevitable, take time to fix. But in any event they will be fixed far faster than they've been fixed before -- and more effectively than at any other university, only a handful of which are providing computing support directly to students as so high a priority. Provide the DP readers with some perspective. ResNet was built into the huge Quadrangle just this summer. Five days after move-in, more than half the students living there were successfully using the network. And students -- the ITAs -- have made that possible. Al Filreis English Professor Chair, Residential Faculty Council u To the Editor: As a computing manager at King's Court/English House, I feel that Tuesday's review on the information technology advisors program ("Dorm tech helpers get mixed reviews," DP, 9/9/97) is an unfair assessment. It is true the ITA program is in its first year of campus-wide implementation and is still maturing. However, let's not forget the old system before ITAs existed: A student finds that his computer will not boot up. He calls the Computing Resource Center and they tell him to wait a couple days, often a week, for a technician to come out. Or worse, the student is told to drag his mini-tower across campus to the CRC. Today, the support is in-house. The average response time in the ITA pilot program was within 3.6 hours, and 90 percent of problems were responded to within 2 hours. Compared to week of waiting or dragging a desktop down Locust Walk, what would you rather do? I recognize indeed, ITAs across campus have a varied range of skills. But an ITA always has the option to refer it their computing manager, who is backed up by a Computing Support Professional. Speaking for KC/EH, we have handled and responded to every referral from an ITA, and we have never received a complaint of a client's problem not being passed to a higher level when needed. The hiring process of the ITAs was more in-depth than the DP reported; it was not as simple as filling out a form on the web. All ITA applicants at KC/EH were asked to send in a full application and a resume, as well as short essays related to their computer skills. ITAs were hired not only for their computing skills, but also for customer service skills which are paramount to their job. Our ITA program has been running smoothly, and performance is exceptional for a first-year program. Esther Chung writes, "I love you guys all and keep on doing your job," after ITA John Lee fixed what was initially described as a hard-drive failure. There may be small initial problems with the ITA program but the benefits of the program far outshine costs. Not one week of school has passed and we almost have everyone connected to ethernet. Has everyone forgotten that it took until mid-October last year before Install-a-thon technicians came by? Kendrick Li Wharton and College '00 KC/EH Computers and Networks Manager Deeper issues surround eating disorders To the Editor: In response to Karen Pasternack's column entitled "The role model of perfection," (DP, 9/10/97) I would like to point out, as a woman recovering and still grappling with an eating disorder, that the issues surrounding eating disorders are far deeper than the feminine images depicted in satires like Clueless. Studies are currently being conducted in the United Kingdom exploring the chemical basis of anorexia, bulimia and overeating. Like other affective disorders, anorexia and bulimia are plausibly chemically based, and, like schizophrenia, for example, there is a necessary impetus to agitate the dormant disorder. Pasternack wrote, "?simply observing a poster on a wall or listening to a speech about body image doesn't seem to prevent women from deteriorating by the decade." I agree. However, the fact remains, and this is precisely the point, there is not a homogenous body of women out there prepared to fight this fight. There are, in fact, many women that willingly subscribe to the "waif" mentality, especially at Penn. Women are competitive by nature, and to dispel the deep-seeded desire for delicacy and perfection, the healthy women espousing this philosophy need only to set a better example. Women are equally to blame for such standards also set by the media, and, of course, men. University President Judith Rodin doesn't need to "call out the troops." Rodin needs to give a wake-up call to the image-obsessed and over-stressed members of the Penn community. Ultimately, for the women and the occasional man that are inflicted with eating disorders, I only hope they can attain a better understanding of "perfection," and the risks they are willing to take to achieve it. Meredith Motley College '00