After seeing a new fee for TU attendance, most were worried. Now the truth can pacify.
When many students saw the new technology fee added to their accounts, they met the news with grief, frustration, worry or some combination of the three. Halfway through the first year with this new fee, however, the importance of adding the cost has most people scratching their heads, asking “how did we ever live without this?”
For starters, the technology fee has finally revolutionized the Wi-Fi available on campus. And the transformation has been incredible. No longer do students suffer from blackouts or poor connections, and it has been easier than ever to connect gaming consoles and streaming devices to the network. Of course, without quite as many classes on Zoom and Collaborate, the Wi-Fi would presumably see a great boost to its performance. But this alone does not explain how far it has come. Internet connectivity, at least so far this school year, has continued uninterrupted with higher upload and download speeds than ever before. The flawlessness of campus Wi-Fi alone may atone for the new fee.
And yet, not just the Wi-Fi has seen great change. The technology available to professors across all majors has seen a huge boost, especially with regard to those in Kendall College of Arts and Sciences. The business school still has its outlets and remarkable projector systems of course, but the whiteboards in Chapman Hall shine like crystal and fewer instructors than ever before in the building find themselves still using chalk instead of dry erase. It almost seems as if the university has finally eliminated the resource disparity between departments and colleges. The projector systems in Kendall Hall too have operated like never before, offering incredible ease of use to professors who lecture there with little to no cause for frustration. It has never been easier for professors on campus to deliver their lectures to students and subsequently never easier for students to learn.
In a last change, and one I was personally surprised to see fall under the umbrella of the technology fee, the heating and air systems in campus dormitories have lifted student comfort to arguably the best in the nation. Prior years saw students in campus dormitories complain about climate control in their residences, particularly the heating systems. The usual complaint was that, once it shifted from air conditioning to heating, the system would run rampant and rival the depths of hell in temperature. Students, albeit prone to exaggeration, living in places like Fisher West would frequently complain of temperatures as high as the upper eighties! No more, though, because as part of a new initiative from TU problems as pathetically solvable as these no longer plague campus.
Although the new technology fee raised more than a few eyebrows when students first saw it, one can easily identify some places where all the money has gone. All those arguing it was just another cheap way to trickle in a bit more revenue have all stuck their foot in their mouth now. At the University of Tulsa, it really is all about maximizing the student experience.
