Addressing our Facebook usage
By Crystal Abrell | Opinion Editor
Shortly after Christmas break, student’s received an e-mail about using social networking while on campus. The e-mail simply said that a large amount of social networking was going on while students were using the University of Indianapolis network.
Information Systems informed us that using Facebook while on campus computers slows internet availability down due to the size of UIndy’s bandwidth space. The bandwidth usage causes slow-downs and unresponsive Web browsing throughout the day.
According to Information Systems Administrative Assistant Gail Cooper, “Facebook has consistently been the No. 1 use of UIndy bandwidth, accounting for approximately 25 percent of all incoming web traffic.”
About this issue, I am torn regarding whether or not we should be allowed to do our social networking while at the university, something of which I am indeed guilty.
Using Facebook on campus, could make it difficult for students who need to browse the Web for academic reasons. The internet speed could be slowed down, making it very hard to get work done efficiently. Student’s that are using the Web for productive reasons should not be hindered by slow network connections due to other student’s use of social networking sites. It is more than frustrating when you need to finish a paper for your next class and cannot do so because someone is on Facebook looking at pictures on the computer next to you.
Some students in the campus community see this situation in a different way. A large number feel as if it is the responsibility of our Information Systems to provide us with enough bandwidth to browse the Web as we please.
We pay thousands of dollars to the school in tuition to ensure that we are provided with a comfortable and fun learning environment. Since we are paying so much money through loans, parents or out of pocket, checking our personal pages online, as long as they are not inappropriate, should not be anyone’s concern.
Another issue, if you are going to limit social networking, you need to limit unnecessary Web browsing. For example games, individual interest, YouTube, e-mail, etc.
According to the IS e-mail students need to “limit useless network traffic.” How can you pin-point what is ‘useless’ without including other examples such as e-mail? I know that most e-mail is indeed useless. Who is to say that Facebook is useless to students? This may be true to older adults, but could not be true to our younger generation.
According to a Sept. 7 Web site article by techcrunch.com, 85 percent of college students use Facebook. Out of that large percentage, 60 percent log onto Facebook daily.
Considering these numbers, I think it would be better to provide Internet usage to what the majority of students want- to be able to check the social network of choice on their downtime at campus. If that’s a large concern of the IS department then maybe they should take care of this issue on their own.
