CSUN Pulls Costly Plug on Students’ Internet Access

Cal State Northridge has learned a lesson painfully familiar to many parents: If you give a college student a credit card, be prepared for a pain in the wallet.

College administrators could contemplate that lesson while writing out a check for their phone bill for the past nine months--a check for $271,623.

If it’s any comfort, at least the students apparently ran up this bill in the pursuit of knowledge, their assigned role in life, and did nothing they weren’t allowed to do.

It all began after the Northridge quake, which heavily damaged the campus a year ago.

“None of our computer labs were functional. . . . We didn’t have any in working order,” said CSUN spokesman Bruce Erickson. Erickson said hundreds of damaged computers had to be moved into trailers, leaving only a limited number for student and faculty use.

The problem: how to maintain student and faculty access to the Internet--a worldwide linkup of university and other computer systems that has become a basic tool of research.

So the school arranged for students and faculty members, using their home computers, to access the Internet by means of an 800 number that would charge the calls to CSUN.

“The service was not primarily intended for students initially,” said Diane Blake, manager of communications services at the university. But after students realized the convenience of the free service, more acquired accounts. At last tally, 8,000 had valid accounts, Blake said. “It proved to be an expensive alternative.” Since the free service went into effect in April, the phone bill has risen an average of 12% each month. The bill for December was $80,411, compared to $11,651 in April.

On Monday, school administrators said “Enough.”

They have decided to restrict the service to faculty members and require students to return to campus computer labs, where the phone bills will be much lower.

Blake said the school was aware that the charges were becoming expensive, but without renovated computer centers they did not have an on-campus alternative.

Administrators say they do not believe there was any abuse of the system. A total of 137,180 calls were made while the system was in place, and only 3% were out of state, Blake said.