Internet charge outrageous

I write in “shock and awe” of the irrational and almost disrespectful future requirement to pay ethernet costs (“Ethernet to cost $100,” March 26, pg. 1). I believe that this “well thought out” business decision is almost a disgrace to how much our university boasts about being one of the “most capable residential networks anywhere” what is its use when you are charging your struggling students a fortune to pay for it? We might as well get better services else where, or better still, buy a splitter and share one person’s $100 internet costs with the whole dorm.

If Boston University is struggling to pay the new costs of providing better internet services, why is it requiring us to pay the full amount? If BU had provided us free service previously, what “big change” did we undergo to have us now pay almost $100 more per person? (About 11,000 people living on campus, multiplied by $100 each, equals $1,100,000 what happened?) What’s most unfair is that to use BU internet services on campus will also require this fee, meaning that those people who chose to live off campus are almost forced to pay, seeing that it is so inconvenient for them to go home and use the internet for class purposes. And what of the registration process?

We’re smart people, we can find many ways around it – especially when it has to do with computers and the internet. To get rid of all of us “cheaters” would probably just end up costing Mr. Comptroller more, and we will experience another increase in costs for the “extraordinary campus network.” I wanted to state how such extravagant and obsequious words were used in that “letter of doom” sent to us from the Office of the Comptroller. I almost laughed out loud. I’ve never seen such stupid reasons for making students pay more: “ensures that it retains its prominence among the best in the world.” Some people should be fired.

The computer lab will also be terribly inefficient, as people would be sharing IDs to log into the internet and use it. The computer lab is crowded as it is, I bet BU will just end up buying lots more computers (maybe right before “campus visits”) to physically show everyone what they spent the “$1,100,000” (or honestly speaking, only $10,000) on, when in fact it isn’t the university’s facilities, but facilities that you can pay for yourself anyway.

The whole point of the internet is so that we have better access to research and experience a more convenient college life. But no, it is only used for boasting, in letters from the Office of the Comptroller. We already pay for phone bills. Sooner or later, we might even need to pay a fee to flush the damn toilets.

I like to be the devil’s advocate in arguments, so I tried to look at Mr. “I-like-to-make-students-pay” Comptroller’s point of view. Nothing … was what I came up with. I used to boast to everyone about how efficient it was to do things here because of the free high-speed internet; now all I see is a 28k modem with a big fat bill attached to it (of course, written in eloquent speech). You tell me.