CUIT

During the Columbia College Student Council elections this past spring, the Experience Columbia party promised to have an online student portal up and running by this fall. Its pledge has not yet materialized.

Online academics at Columbia are getting a makeover, via an initiative by Student Services, the Columbia Center for New Media Teaching and Learning, and CUIT to switch Courseworks over to the alternate platform Sakai. After investigating several different options and piloting the programs extensively, Student Services officials have decided to switch platforms and begin using Sakai, a system with capabilities that exceeded those of Courseworks and which those involved hope will streamline and expand classroom use of new media.

Although CUIT takes pains to back up and secure all student data that resides on CUIT servers, iit has not made its logging and data-storage policies explicit . CUIT should clearly explain its data backup policies on its Web site so students can be comfortable that their data and e-mails are secure.

Despite the fact that Columbia is a world-renowned and cutting-edge research institution, students and faculty lack access to a useful and mainstream technology that is often considered an educational necessity—a campuswide wireless network. The current network is inadequate, and the University should enact a plan to improve wireless access on campus.

When it comes to getting paper extensions, “My hard drive crashed” is quickly becoming the 21st-century equivalent of “The dog ate my homework.”