Mirror - Vol. 23, No. 05 - October 23, 1997

              FAIRFIELD UNIVERSITY
IRROR
Volume 23 Number 5 The Image of Fairfield Thursday, October 23, 1997
Students irked by lack of computers
Kristen Sullivan
A&E Editor
You walk down to the com-puter
lab to make some last sec-ond
changes to your term paper
and as you enter the lab, a profes-sor
tells you, "We have a class in
here."
Fairfield students say this is
a frequent occurrence on cam-pus,
leading to a shortage ofcom-puter
facilities at a school that
prides itself on being electroni-cally
up-to-date. You can search
the campus in vain for a 24-hour
computer lab, like many other
schools offer, they said.
"Every time that I go to check
my e-mail, there's a class in ev-ery
lab," Adriana Maguire '98
said.
"Why have a computer lab
when it's used as a classroom?"
Patrick Robinson '99 said.
Students have complained
that there are classes constantly
conducted in the computer labs,
which cuts down severely on the
amount of computers that are
available for student use. Stu-dents
say that the university
claims to foster academics, yet
resources such as computers are
not a plentiful commodity.
The scheduling of classes
in these computer labs is done
by Valerie Furgess, secretary
for University Computing Ser-vices.
Furgess said, "the sched-uling
varies from lab to lab to
day to day and monthto month."
Furgess said, "she only ar-ranges
the scheduling for the
computer labs and that deci-sions
are made higher up from
me."
Given the number of com-puters
on campus, approxi-mately
80 for use by 3,200 un-
«1'Every time that I go to
check my e-mail, there's a
class in every lab,"
Adriana Maguire '98 said.
She said that the class sched-ules
are posted on the door of
the specific lab, yet students
such as.Robinson feel that dif-ferent
accommodations need to
be made for classes that require
lab time. "There should be com-puter
labs and computer class-rooms,"
Robinson said.
dergraduate students and fac-ulty,
the availability of these
computers is limited.
Scott Middlemiss '98, an
economics major who uses
computers on a regular basis
for his work, said, "I had to
wait a halfhour last week to use
a computer."
Computer time in these labs
is limited by the number ofcom-
.puters and the lab hours. Many
computer labs on campus have
30 computers, but four are not
working, and haven't been work-ing
for some time.
Additionally, when the com-puters
are functioning, the
amount of time students can
spend in the labs is limited. Lab
hours are posted outside the door,
and yet those hours are unreli-able.
The Canisius lab for ex-ample
is scheduled to be open
Monday through Friday at 9 a.m.
and students say that they are left
waiting until 10 a.m. or later be-cause
the lab assistant never ar-rives
to cover the shift.
Students have suggested that
Fairfield University adopt acom-puter
lab system like that ofother
universities, such as Marist Col-lege
and Syracuse University,
where computer labs are open
24-hours a day. Fairfield stu-dents,
like Robinson feel that it
would be beneficial to the stu-dents
if even one computer lab
was open 24 hours.
Continued on page 4
MADD offers college scholarships
Maura Parsons
News Editor
According to the Na-tional
Highway Traffic Safety
Administration (NHTSA), drunk
driving accidents among college
students have increased over the
past five years. In response to
this deadly trend, the Connecti-cut
chapter of Mother's Against
Drunk Driving is co-sponsoring
.an essay contest with 3 scholar-ship
opportunities for Connecti-cut
college and university stu-dents.
The theme of the essay
contest is "The Effects of Drunk
Driving on the Family." MADD
and the Reliance Direct auto
insurance company will award a
$5,000 scholarship to the essay
contest winner. Second and third
place winners will receive $3,000
and $ 1,000 scholarships, respec-tively.
The executive director
ofMADDin Connecticut, Janice
Heggie, believes that the contest
and scholarship awards will en-
Wednesday afternoon's "drunk driving" accident.
courage college students to re-flect
on drunk driving issues.
"The scholarship contest helps
students financially," Heggie
said, "but more importantly, it
makes them really think about
the consequences of drinking
and driving."
Last year, 17,126
people in the nation were killed
in drunk driving accidents.
More than 30 percent of the
drunk drivers responsible for
the fatalities were under the
age of 25, according to the
NHTSA.
"Through awareness
efforts, such as this essay con-test,
we hope to decrease alco-hol-
related crashes particularly
among our nation's young
people," Heggie said.
This past Wednesday
for Alcohol Awareness Week,
the University's Peer Educa-tion
Network also promoted
drunk driving awareness by
staging a car accident. Fairfield
police cars, ambulances and a
medical helicopter all arrived at
photo: Mirror archives
the simulated accident and pro-ceeded
as if a true drunk driving
accident had occurred.
If MADD statistics for
drunk driving continue to increase
or remain as they are today, the
simulated drunk driving accident
may prove to be a future reality
for many Fairfield students or
members of their families. It is
estimated that two out of every
five people will be involved or
directly affected by an alcohol-related
car accident in their life-times.
Inside
this week
No place to play
Find out why the music
departmentfeels slighted
by the university, see
page 3.
lobal Outreach
Ten seniors will be
traveling to Duron,
Ecuador over Christmas
breakfor ten days, see
page 6.
RAs are
students too
Learn about the
demands on your RA,
see page 8.
FUSA Presi-dent
updates
campus
Find out what is going
on with concerts, cable,
and more, see page 12.
The pains of
the computer
lab
What needs to be
changed, see page 12.
Check out the
Stones
The Giant Stadium
concert reviewed, see
page 16.
Find out what's
better than
"Dick"
To see what the hype is
all about, see page 14.
Tennis teams
bring home
MAAC crown
Men's and women's
teams take out the rest of
the MAAC, see page 18.