By Ashlyn Scearce- Assistant News Editor
On Friday, November 1, the Wi-Fi cut out for University of Lynchburg residents of Vernon, Brevard Streets, and Langhorne Avenue. On November 5, students received an update stating that the fiber repair company assessed the damage and determined that they would need to order equipment to fix the repairs. After being told the Wi-Fi would be fixed by 2 p.m. on November 5, it was not fixed until four days later, on November 9.
This issue caused many concerns to students who had assignments to complete.
Jessy Lubadde, one of the community assistants for the University of Lynchburg housing residents, said, “Every time I had to do my homework, I had to walk over to Schewel to connect to Wi-Fi. It was very frustrating having to go out of my way just to get my assignments to load”.
Kaylin Rutherig, Criminology and Psychology double major, ‘27, added, “I had to connect my personal hotspot to my computer every time I wanted to work on my homework. I even received a text from my phone service stating that I have used 80% of my hotspot, and that’s since the Wi-Fi stopped working”.
Another issue on November 3 was that the fire alarms constantly went off for no reason. From 12 a.m. until 5 a.m., a few of the houses with disabled internet, as well as Shackelford residents, experienced this issue. Campus Security was called, and they could enter the code that resets the whole system. Unfortunately, the reset code did not work, and maintenance had to power off the fire systems.
Rutherig stated, “This was very frustrating for us because we have an emotional support animal that had to be taken outside each time the alarm went off. Also, it is not safe that our alarm system has been turned off since that night”.
Unfortunately, only two officers worked the night of the fire alarm catastrophe.
William Giles, the Campus Security officer, said, “Y’all are not the only ones dealing with this issue. I do not know what is going on, but we will figure it out so y’all can get some sleep.”
The next day, maintenance worked tirelessly to resolve the issue. They noticed that the smoke detectors were extremely old and needed to be replaced. They also believed that the fire systems could be connected to the Wi-Fi, which was why they were constantly going off.
However, it has now been four days since the Wi-Fi was fixed, and some fire systems are still deactivated.
For concerns about internet outages, contact Information Technology and Resources – University of Lynchburg.
