Over the past two weeks that the Student Government Association (SGA) Leadership Team has been on campus, they have worked hard to address some of the technological issues faced by students. First and foremost is the issue of limited e-mail storage. We know how annoying it is to constantly empty your mailbox, and we have been working with Colgate's Information Technology Services (ITS) department to come up with a solution. One possibility that we are exploring is a version of Google's Gmail customized specifically for Colgate. For those of you who aren't familiar with Gmail, it's a leading and fast-growing e-mail service that allows virtually unlimited email storage and has a next-generation capacity for customization. Even better, you'll still be able to keep your same e-mail address, contacts, calendar, and old emails.
We're also trying to address the seemingly elusive, but unfortunately very real, problem of illegal downloading of music on campus. Six Colgate students were sued this past year by the recording industry. At a cost of $750 per song plus legal expenses, it's a big deal. We highly recommend using Ruckus, a program that allows you to legally download music for free. Also, we're working with ITS to open up the network so you can access music through iTunes throughout the entire campus -- not just people from your class year or in your residence hall.
In order to ease the off-campus housing selection process, we are working on a project to put students directly in contact with Hamilton landlords. While there are many excellent properties available, we have spoken to several students who are displeased with their property's management. With some helpful guidance from Dean Gary Ross, a former SGA President, we will be launching a website over the next couple of weeks that will allow students to rate their local landlords. We're taking it upon ourselves to try to fix this situation for the entire Colgate community.
We hope that you see these as positive initiatives that will have true benefits for the Colgate community. We would like to thank Mike Schneider, a member of the class of 2010, SGA Policy Coordinator for Technology Initiatives, for managing these various projects.
Throughout the year, we hope to use this column to keep you up to date on the SGA's initiatives to improve the Colgate experience. Please reach out to us with any questions or suggestions.
