One major item has been left out of the recent discussion of possible improvements at Dartmouth College: technological upgrades. The new Student Assembly and the future Dartmouth president should both push for the improvement of Dartmouth's hardware and software systems. Dartmouth students, staff and faculty will all benefit from this improvement.
We used to be seriously tech-savvy. Back in 2002, Wired Magazine dubbed Dartmouth the "Most Wired College." In 2005, Intel ranked Dartmouth fourth in its list of "Most Unwired" U.S. campuses. Now, with an outdated e-mail system and an administration that is more wired than its wireless students, Dartmouth College is falling behind.
Let's start with BlitzMail. During the Ice Age, BlitzMail was a one-of-a-kind program -- the first combination of software and hardware that could send communiques between computing machines. Then, e-mail was born. E-mail evolved and improved while BlitzMail basked in its former glory. BlitzMail is still faster than similar e-mail clients because, like instant chat programs, it pushes messages to our computers instead of waiting for our computers to request messages from the server.
Yet BlitzMail lacks some of the important functionality that will cause us seniors to switch to Gmail next year.
First, you can't search within messages or across folders. This is important for many people who have thousands of Blitzes sitting in a dozen folders. Most BlitzMail alternatives, such as Gmail, Hotmail and Yahoo! Mail, allow these types of searches.
Second, BlitzMail can't send or receive HTML messages -- that is, e-mails with formatting and pictures. That means that those e-mail updates you've signed up for come to your inbox looking like gibberish. And foreign students: Tell your parents to learn English, because their Chinese, Arabic or Russian e-mails won't transliterate in Blitz (unless you read squares).
Third, BlitzMail looks plain ugly. Most other e-mail clients I know of look better. The Gmail interface is simple and clean. Microsoft Outlook is bulky but clean -- especially the Vista version. BlitzMail is gray and boxy and reminds me of Windows 95.
Finally, Dartmouth's Computing Services have chosen to prioritize openness over security in the BlitzMail system. A friend majoring in computer science told me that she hasn't learned how to hack into Blitzes yet, but a lot of her fellow majors taking Computer Networks (Computer Science 78) have. So when you get a Blitz from President Wright about the naked barbecue on the Green -- you might want to think twice.
Improving BlitzMail is not the only technological upgrade the administration and the Student Assembly can make. They can also help professors podcast their lectures on Blackboard. Podcasts will help students catch up on missed lectures and review attended ones. Some professors may think that podcasts will encourage students to skip class. They should know that nothing short of a pop quiz will prevent a lazy student from skipping class. So professors, if you are not giving pop quizzes, then make our lives easier and podcast your lectures!
I think some campuses have difficulty choosing between useful and ridiculous technological improvements. It's useful, for example, when Tufts, Babson and Endicott Colleges introduce washing machines that automatically inject detergent. This eliminates the need for students to buy and store detergent, and it makes laundry rooms much cleaner. But it's rather useless for M.I.T. and Boston College to install chips into washers and dryers that e-mail you when their cycles complete. Seriously. You can come down and check yourself.
As the Student Assembly and other campus organizations interested in student welfare plan their agendas, they should move technological innovation to the top of their list.
