The following piece is satire and should not be misconstrued for actual reporting. Any resemblance to a student, staff or faculty member is coincidental.
Student analysts at American University have pioneered a method to determine the trust and reliability of various services at or relating to AU. Their ranking is determined by multiple aspects of reliability, such as expectations, failure rate, overall consistency and student frustration. The Wi-Fi network provided to students, staff and faculty, known as “Eagle-Secure,” ranks second to last on the list of 15, narrowly avoiding last place by beating out the University’s mental health services.
Sasha Whitaker, the senior in charge of the study, said she didn’t expect Eagle-Secure to rank near the bottom of the reliability rankings.
“We were initially a bit taken aback when we compiled all of the results. When taking a closer look at the data, we began to understand why,” she said. “It’s one of the most important services on campus. However, it consistently fails many students in some way on a daily basis.”
Many students are unsurprised by the low placement of the Wi-Fi network. According to junior Clare Mullen, the Internet is constantly cutting out.
“I’m in my third year here, and the internet has never been reliable,” Mullen said. “Sometimes it’s better just to turn off Wi-Fi and use cellular data instead. It’s a daily struggle; do I use data or deal with a loss of connection every few minutes?”
Some community members pointed out that the internet was particularly unreliable during finals.
“The Wi-Fi was so bad during and leading up to finals week that I couldn’t get my students’ grades uploaded within the 72 hours that I was supposed to,” said SIS professor James Casey.
The expectation that finals will be graded within 72 hours is also ranked particularly low by the study. Joining Eagle-Secure on the list of reliability are 2Fix, Megabytes and the Red Line.
See the full list below:
- Cleaning services
- Package delivery services
- Dean of Students Office
- Tapingo
- The Red Line
- The Wonk Bus
- Eagle Service
- Blackboard
- TDR having food out
- The line at Subway
- Finals being graded/uploaded within 72 hours
- 2Fix
- Megabytes
- Eagle-Secure
- Mental health
Caeden Cloud is a freshman in the School of Public Affairs and a satire columnist at The Eagle.
