While Ball State University's wireless Internet technology can connect us to people from Mexico City to Tokyo, the connection to our neighbors at Indiana and Purdue universities is actually weakening.
An I-Light optical-fiber network has been installed at the two Indiana universities, including the IUPUI campus, so that students from either school can access the Web on either campus without special log-in codes or access cards. Apparently, field and court rivalries can be pushed aside when matters of educational advancement come into the picture.
Ball State, however, is not quite up to pace.
By August of 2004, the Ball State wireless network had 350 on-campus access points, could handle 10,000 users and was running at 54 mbps, while other Indiana universities were running slower on older technology, just trying to keep up. Thanks, in part, to a higher-than-average student technology fee, Ball State was able to stay ahead of the tech curve ... for a while.
In this fifth year of the 21st century, however, the university continues touting its tech program, while IU and Purdue held the top two spots in the nation last year on the Intel Corp. "Most Unwired College Campuses" list. Ball State didn't make the list, and there were 98 other spots.
Perhaps it's because when we increase our technological capabilities, we tend to increase them for individual groups and not as a unified campus. When Ball State received a $20 million grant from the Lily Foundation in 2002, the communications department benefitted with technology that was either useless or unavailable to others. Teaching majors are required to have Macintosh laptops, but other departments only expect notebooks and ball points. Freshmen were given 1-gigabyte flash drives this year, but other students weren't offered the same benefit.
If Ball State continues segmenting technology advancements on campus, it can't expect to be a major player in the inter-campus connectivity game.
Vice President of Information and Technology O'Neal Smitherman says that when I-Light technology begins spreading to other universities, Ball State will be the next to receive this access.
Even so, Ball State needs to push for that happening sooner, rather than later - unless university officials are comfortable with being Indiana's No. 3 university.
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