Plans are on the table to make most of the Medford campus wireless, but money is standing in the way.
Wireless Internet is currently available in the University's libraries, the campus center, Dowling Hall, the F.W. Olin Center, the ASEAN Auditorium and most other rooms at the Fletcher School, and the lounges of Tilton, South, Houston and Carmichael Halls.
Information and Technology Services conducted a site survey of the Medford campus and found it would cost $12,000 to add wireless access to the president's lawn and the academic and residential quads.
The money covers the construction of six signal access points, at a cost of $2,000 each, but not the maintenance or service of the network. Tufts Community Union Senate Historian Ed Kalafarski, a senior, said the Senate asked the University to perform the survey.
University officials said while expanded wireless was being considered, there were no definite plans. "Expanded wireless is one of many projects to be considered," Manager of Networks and Special Projects Marj Minnigh said. "There are many important issues vying for increased investment - need-blind admissions, new buildings, and so on." She said the project would require "significant new capital and operating funds."
The new music building and Sophia Gordon Hall, the new dorm, will not have wireless access. "[Wireless] will be extended to both of those buildings when other wireless plans go forward," Minnigh said.
Other schools have already completed large wireless networks. Dartmouth College has wireless on all of its approximately one square mile campus. "You look at places like Dartmouth and it's clear we're falling behind," Kalafarski said.
Tufts tries to keep up to date with trends in higher education, Minnigh said. "We stay in touch with other schools through many professional associations and sometimes by directly talking to their IT staffs about specific projects," she said.
She listed Amherst, Bowdoin, Colby, Dartmouth, Mount Holyoke, Trinity, Union, Wellesley and Williams Colleges and Brown, Cornell, Princeton, Rochester, Wesleyan and Brandeis Universities as "peer schools" with which her department coordinates.
Brandeis started plans for making its whole campus wireless last December. The school's endowment is $467.8 million. Tufts closed the 2004 fiscal year with an endowment of over $812 million.
Sophomore Evan Dreifuss, the co-chair of the Senate's services committee, said getting the money in place is the main obstacle. He has planned fundraising from students, the administration and alumni in an attempt to get wireless access to be available by this spring.
A Senate survey last year asked students if they would support the expansion of wireless access across campus. "Students who did answer were in overwhelming support," Dreifuss said.
