GF hears talk on revamping campus technology

The revamping of the Computer Services here at Oberlin was of high priority at Tuesday's General Faculty (GF) meeting. Director of Computing John Bucher presented a four-page memo to the General Faculty that outlined several steps that will link Oberlin to the fast-paced world of information technology.

Bucher stressed that the computing center is working hard to keep up with technological advancements. He said he feels "confident that he is doing a good job."

Bucher said that the center is facing a "service support crisis" in terms of funding and timing for implementation of new systems.

As computing technology continues to become more advanced, Bucher said, "the appetite for support is insatiable. We are simply not going to be able to please everyone all the time."

Over the next year, the computing center will attempt to eliminate some of the dissatisfaction among not only student users but faculty and administrators. In the meantime, Bucher said, "I'm proud of the network. Although it does have its downfalls, for the most part it works fine."

The introduction of Internet2, a program that will be able to deliver full motion video to the desktop, will be a collaborative effort. This software will allow massive amounts of information to be transferred via the World Wide Web, in real-time.

"We're ready for Internet2," said Bucher . "It is a national effort hosted by larger information companies, as soon as the funding becomes available, it will be available to the Oberlin community."

OPUS is another system that is part of the new computing plan. This program is part of a larger administrative system migration. This system will slowly outdate programs like Ocvaxc and quickmail.

Bucher said he hopes to make e-mail easily accessible. "There had been great success of the Kiosk and e-mail specific computers outside of the computing center on A-level. Approximately 2800 students use their email every day. It's important that students have as much access to telnet as they possibly can," said Bucher. "We found out that 570 students used Telnet to check their e-mail on Christmas day."

Students' use of the computing center is another high priority. A large portion of the computing center budget is used for students. The program that provides free printing uses over $30,000 to cover ink, toner and paper.

"Students use a lot of paper, but they find it to be a good service. It's way better than those printing cards," Bucher said.