By Brian Brink

At the beginning of every year Thiel’s internet seems to have hiccups when 700 students converge on the campus. This year, however, has been worse than ever before.

“Sure, there have been problems before but never this bad,” Tyler Wright, a senior math major said about his experience with previous years.

The biggest complaints from students about the Wi-Fi issues came in two forms, disruption of school work and disruption their decompression time.

Many students talked about not being able to connect to printers, so they couldn’t print out the homework they did. Others said that they couldn’t do their homework because Moodle and E-mails taking very long to load if they did at all.

“My time management is messed up because of this,” Terri Eddy, a senior accounting and business major and President of the Student Government Association, said. She went on to say that as President of SGA students have come to her with their complaints thinking she could pass the message along.

“It’s not just the Wi-Fi, the ethernet, or hardline, is also very slow,” Kira Snyder, senior religious studies major and Programs Director at WXTC. “It was so slow I couldn’t do my radio show on Friday.”

Of course, school work is one thing, but relaxation is another for the students on campus. For most students their time to decompress from school takes three forms, all of which use internet; they are gaming, streaming and social media.

Timothy Jackson, a senior media communications major, and Malik Fisher, a senior neurology and psychology major, agreed that with the Wi-Fi speeds were not allowing them to stream Netflix. Eddy and Danielle Wiseman, a sophomore media communications major, both said that not being able to load any social media only added to their stress.

But not all students need internet to decompress. “I relax by eating a snack,” Erica Auderzinski, a junior psychology major, said.

Students haven’t been the only ones on campus effected though, faculty and staff have felt the effects also.

“It’s been very frustrating,” Barbara Long-Cooper, Administrative Assistant of Faculty Services, said.

Dr. Patrick Hecking, Professor of Physics, said that though he doesn’t use Wi-Fi, he has noticed connecting to printers being slower than normal. Rev. Jayne Thompson, Campus Pastor, and Dr. Hecking both said that YouTube videos used in their classes have been slow to load.

Thiel’s IT Technical Support Specialist, David Knauff, sat down on Wednesday to answer a few questions about the issues.

“There’s so many possibilities as to what it could be and trying to track it down is what takes time,” Knauff said about what the cause could be and why it’s been going so long.

The speculation around campus is that this issue relates to the loss of cable TV on campus. Knauff put that to rest by saying that the internet service provider is the same as it always has been. He doesn’t know why people think that.

“We think we made some really good progress on it today and the issue should be resolved,” he said about IT’s part in fixing the issue. “There might be some hit or miss small issues, here and there, but the major speed issues that everybody has been complaining about. Those should be resolved.”

For those still experiencing issues, you can go to the Solution Center, in the Academic Center, between the times of 8 a.m. and 5 p.m., Monday through Friday.