On January 28th, a Wi-Fi outage forced students to learn like those in the 1990’s. The outage lasted nearly the entire academic school day. Students and staff members constantly and hopefully refreshed their pages for a glimpse of their online assignments and work.
In the modern classroom, the idea that we are all in a technology trap is all too real. Not only students and teachers were affected, but school phones were down, and websites with crucial information like grades, attendance, and emergency contact lines were unable to be accessed. While this issue can certainly be labeled as a crisis, how can we learn to adapt without wifi and how can we avoid these outages?
According to Principal of Academics, Nicole Read, this incident was caused by a person experiencing homelessness who intentionally cut the fiber that fuels our campus. Through an investigation run by Spectrum, they believe that the individual was looking for copper wire to resell, but they did not find it in the fiber. Duarte High School was not affected because they have a separate line.
This is the second wifi outage since January. The first outrage was on a Sunday, and didn’t have an affect on the school. Ms. Read has expressed her frustration with Spectrum, but their solution is costly. It would entail installing a back-up line in a different location to help feed the CSArts campus during times of emergency, but at a high cost.
“If it’s only going to be needed once a year I can’t justify taking that money from instruction from teachers to prevent 1 day of internet.”
Tsinghua Students Visit CSArts