The Daily Eagle

Searching for Wi-Fi

Geena Papini, Grade 11

Listen very carefully. Can you hear it? Echoing throughout our corridors is the sad, plaintive call of nearly 12,000 people lamenting the loss of their beloved Wi-Fi. Classes grind to a halt as teachers realise their videos aren’t buffering, students pull out their hair as they try to download the overdue homework they emailed to themselves, only to find the internet- gone.

Or at the very least, there, but not connecting.

It is true; we have never loved the Wi-Fi here at Carson. It’s slow, and unreliable (Seriously, it feels like there’s less bandwidth than a house), and notorious for tricking you into thinking it’s going to work only to die on you when you’re up in front of the class giving a prezi. No doubt you’ve had, or know someone who’s had a similar experience. The internet at Carson isn’t ideal- anyone who’s used it knows that- but it’s better than nothing, right? The world can call us unhealthily internet-dependant if they like, but the truth is, Wi-Fi is now a vital part of student, teacher, and admin life. We use it primarily for research, but a majority of senior students (and quite a few junior ones, I imagine) also use it to manage homework and projects, download presentations, and contact teachers during spare blocks. Our teachers, too, are at the mercy of our Wi-Fi’s whims, as they rely on heavily on BCESIS, an internet-based program, to take attendance, store grades, homework and manage other student information. BCESIS isn’t the most loved program- you’ll find plenty of teachers who will easily curse its name- but that is what they have to work with, and when the internet is down….well can you blame them for being irritable? They also often need internet to teach their classes; whether they’re showing a video, looking at a website, or trying the download the amazing worksheets they’ve spent hours altering to perfection. When the internet’s gone, they can’t do any of that, and while that at first may seem like an amazing situation (no class work, yay!!), let me tell you, it’s not. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I like to get all my work done in class. It means I don’t have to do a mountain-load of homework, which is what has been happening the past few days as a result of the fact that no work gets done in class.

So now we’ve come to the whole point of this article. We all know that we need the internet, and not only that, we need reliable internet. For the past few weeks, we have not had that- the teacher’s network has been sketchy at the best of times, and the NVSD-Portal- the student network, has been all but non-existent. There have been rumors flying around as to why this is, and the one that I’ve heard not only from students, but teachers as well, is that somebody, most likely a student, has hacked the networks and has infected it with a virus. I personally don’t know if this is 100% true, but if it is- this is for that person: Bravo. You can hack. Good for you, I’m sure your parents are so proud. Now that you’ve taken joy in destroying something that is vital to the school, and you’ve had your fun feeling like such a rebel- I kindly request that you stop this childish uprising, and give us back our Wi-Fi. Do you honestly think that people will admire you for making their lives that much harder? Maybe you think you’re doing everyone a favour; that we won’t have to do as much school work without the internet, but that is dead wrong, and school is stressful enough without having to worry about whether or not the Wi-Fi will work when you have to get up in front of the class and do a huge presentation. So please, if there really is someone sabotaging the internet- stop. This isn’t a threat, or a promise of retribution. But know this: if this keeps going and we eventually do find out who the culprit is, I sincerely doubt that anyone will be in a particularly forgiving mood. Just something to think about.

If hacking isn’t the problem, well then, I guess we can all go back to complaining about shoddy building quality and the broke school district. We’ll just have to keep our fingers crossed, and maybe help the school out by fundraising for a better system.