COLUMN: Let us back on to the Internet

From Emily Lieff's, "Sassy Peach," Fall '99 From Emily Lieff's, "Sassy Peach," Fall '99In the good old days, I could check e-mail from any computer on campus. All I needed was a mouse, a keyboard and five free minutes and the Internet was mine. There is a good reason that we were using them for e-mail -- we needed them. There is also a reason that there were always lines to use these computers -- because people found them convenient and the only place where we could check e-mail and still get to class on time. Of course, that wasn't always true. Until last summer, Penn students could use the Steinberg-Dietrich computer labs to check their e-mail. Steiny-D was, by far, the most convenient place to check e-mail -- it had the most machines and was close to Locust Walk and the computers actually worked. I suppose I cannot criticize Wharton too much for its actions. Though I do take it personally that they don't even want me inside their building, I suppose they have every right to limit access to their own students. I can, however, criticize the College for not taking action once this happened. Where did the College think that their students would go to check e-mail on campus? The Perelman Quad? Clearly, they chose to basically ignore the problem because the library seemed to be handling the overflow. So, we College students, suddenly finding that an SAS account is a major disadvantage, made our way over to the first floor of the Van Pelt Library. Here, college students could check e-mail with relatively few distractions other than the fact that 30,000 people have to share 30 computers. After a few months, of course, this sparkling, up-to-date fantasy of a computer lab began to deteriorate. Half of the computers were broken on any given day and the mouse pads and wrist rests appear to have bites taken out of them from students who I assume got hungry and wanted a quick snack. Plus, the keyboards didn't work. One day, I found myself sitting at a computer with no Es. With the login name "elieff," it's pretty hard to check e-mail without Es. So, I switched to another computer -- which unfortunately had no Os. After spending $120,000 at this university, I expect a minimum of 26 letters on each and every Penn keyboard. Penn is an Ivy League institution -- 24 letters just won't cut it if we want to stay on U.S. News & World Report's top 10. Either that, or change our name to the "Univrsity f Pnnsylvania." Despite it's shortcomings, we put up with this computer lab because, basically, it was the only centrally located one that would let us in. Wharton and Engineering excluded us, Annenberg closed for repairs and Rosengarten uses broken Macs. So, we dealt with the first-floor Van Pelt computers, even with all of their faults. But last week, Van Pelt let us know that they would rather have their computers stand empty than be of use to the average student. Sure, they have offered us Rosengarten and the fifth-floor lab, but when was the last time any of had time to run up to the fifth floor of Van Pelt to check e-mail in the 10 minutes between classes or had patience to wait on the long lines for the few Rosengarten machines? Disconnecting e-mail because people were using it too much seems silly to me. If a shoe store finds itself having more customers than it can handle, does it close down and start selling hardware? No, it expands --takes on more space or more employees in order to better serve the needs of the customer. Of course, this is not just the fault of Van Pelt, but also of the College. Penn claims that it wants us to keep up with the rest of the country technologically but we seem to have suddenly exited the information superhighway. What good are computers when students cannot use them? What good is e-mail when the only place to get it is west of 38th Street? How exactly does Penn expect us to keep up? I'm not quite sure but e-mail doesn't seem to be Penn's answer. Perhaps we should all go back Morse Code. As for me, I'm planning to submit my column by smoke signals next week. Perhaps that will get my message across.