While Student Assembly is planning to expand its web team and launch additional computer-related services, members of the Kiewit Computing Services staff are interested in streamlining the maintainance of the Assembly-created resources that already exist. These services, which include the course review guide, telephone wake-up and the textbook exchange, are hosted on Kiewit Computing hardware and are maintained by students no longer affiliated with the College.
All existing Assembly-provided technical services are currently administered by Sam Reisner '02, who lives and works in New York City. David Bucciero, director of Technical Services, said that while he appreciated student interest in developing new technical projects, students should also focus on maintaining those services that already exist.
"Students are on a four year cycle," he said. "But the services they create are designed to be around for much longer, and then we run into problems."
Bucciero said that, ideally, control of projects would be transferred to new students when the person who developed them graduates from the College. Recently, however, students interested in working with technical resources created their own projects rather than picking up existing ones. As a result, there is no immediate support staff for Student Assembly's technical services.
Reisner said that while he is happy to keep working on the services, having students involved on campus would be helpful.
"We didn't have a succession plan that worked as well as we would have liked," he said.
Bucciero said his department has considered restarting the SysProg program that Kiewit ran in the 1990s. Through this program, students applied for paid positions as interns in the College's computing department and then worked with the technical staff to develop new applications.
"It sort of fell off, but something like that would be much better integrated," Bucciero said, adding that he has considered working with Dartmouth's department of computer science to create an independent research course that would follow the SysProg model.
The undefined ownership of the hardware on which the Assembly services are hosted presents additional problems. Kiewit and Assembly representatives were unable to determine which group originally purchased the servers and exactly who was responsible for performing routine upgrades. According to both Bucciero and Assembly President Travis Green '08, there is no formal agreement between the Assembly and Kiewit regarding maintenance of the servers that host Assembly-related projects.
"We've been paying maintenance and buying security certificates, but it's just something we kind of took on," Bucciero said, adding that though Kiewit has paid for hardware upgrades and other associated costs, there is no official budget for these expenses.
The Assembly has provided computing-related services at the College since 2001, when the course guide, once an annual publication, was converted into an online database.
"That was sort of the precedent for SA providing a service like this," said Reisner, one of the students who pioneered the project.
According to Reisner, he and several friends interested in creating technical resources to benefit the student body turned to the Assembly for help because, at the time, there were no other outlets for such projects.
"We basically worked with the Assembly as sort of an unofficially affiliated group so we could use their resources," Reisner said.
The Assembly plans to discuss funding for the new website and other new services at Tuesday's Assembly meeting.
