I was quite pleased to see TSL’s article about the October 2nd ITS password disaster. However, as both students and faculty have been dissatisfied with ITS’s performance for several years, I feel that it is time to call for a more thorough review of its standards and practices.

First, I contest ITS Director Ken Pflueger’s estimate that his office was responsible for erasing only a third of student and faculty passwords. I do not know a single student, including those studying abroad, who did not have his or her password wiped. The number of students coming into SACs with problems was so great that student employees had affixed a paper sign to the garbage can by the door directing people with “password problems” to the help desk.

Second, I call into question ITS’s standards for contacting students about network changes or problems. This fall, the working address for accessing student webmail was changed, but only incoming freshmen were notified. Sophomores, juniors, and seniors were never given official notification. Instead, a student employee of ITS took it upon himself to send out a mass email to inform the remaining three quarters of the student body. Student webspaces were also shuffled around during the summer, and at no point during this procedure did the employees in charge inform the student body or even their own staff (who were quite perplexed when I called them to complain).

Third, I ask where the money is going. Every year, the computers in SACs are replaced with new ones and the old machines are given to faculty and staff, yet ITS’s own student employees had to beg to have their outdated help desk machines replaced by two of the computers being removed. Last year, the internet router in Oldenborg, which serves 145 students, failed on a weekly basis but was not replaced. And during this summer’s renovation of SACs, the full-time employee offices were renovated but the student spaces such as the bathrooms and the computing classroom were left nearly untouched. When I asked about it, I was told that the special carpet squares, used in SACs to allow wiring to pass under the floor, have been discontinued. Clearly ITS hired incompetent contractors, as this summer, during the SACs renovation, I watched a redecorating show set at UCLA that used nearly identical flooring.

Perhaps ITS doesn’t have enough funding to perform all its duties adequately. But if this is the case, why does the organization throw away thousands of dollars worth of working computer parts every year? Outside both SACs and Gibson, a pile of machinery usually resides ready to be tossed, including working monitors and DVD players that could be sold to Pomona students and staff instead of taking up space in a landfill.

Unlike many of the college’s technological difficulties, none of these problems are out of ITS’s control to fix. To ITS, I say to make use of competent full-time staff so that your organization can stop being propped up by your part-time student employees. To the college administration, I say to start holding this organization responsible for its contracted responsibilities and punish employees who do not do their jobs.

Jennifer Hardee
PO ’05