As UTSA students and faculty headed into the Fall 2023 semester, issues with AirRowdy left them unable to connect to the campus Wi-Fi. The connectivity issues not only disrupted students’ ability to study on campus, but also interfered with in-class activities.
“There’s always been issues with the Wi-Fi,” said Gabriella Penfiel said, a digital communications student at UTSA. “I feel like we’re a big enough campus and have enough money to where we should have better Wi-Fi. Especially since we’re using it every day.”
This is not the first time UTSA’s AirRowdy has created problems for students. In 2018, The Paisano reported that students had difficulty connecting to AirRowdy. In 2022, students complained again about the student and guest Wi-Fi failing to authenticate, which resulted in students turning to platforms such as Reddit to find solutions.
Students feel that the lack of a secure Wi-Fi connection is affecting their grades. “It disconnects me whenever I need it during class, especially if I have classes that take online quizzes, and that affects my grade so it’s just been terrible,” Luis Juarez said, an environmental science major.
Kendra Ketchum, Vice President for Information Management and Technology at UTSA, released a statement saying that University Technology Solutions (UTS) would be working on resolving the issues. However, many students are still encountering Wi-Fi instability.
Ketchum acknowledged student complaints in another statement on Sept. 2. “At the beginning of the semester, when we first received reports about connectivity issues, particularly in the [John Peace Library], we took some additional steps,” Ketchum said. “As recently as last weekend, we added new wireless access points and added more fiber bandwidth to our core routing to improve reliability and service performance in the library.”
Ketchum went on to say this did not entirely fix the network and thanked students for their patience while University Technology Solutions continues to find a solution to the Wi-Fi connectivity issues.
