Why, or what happened to our Wi-Fi on campus? It has gone to hell in a hand basket. Technology friend and now foe is an essential tool for students. It is not just about the texting, Skype-ing, gaming and talking.

Students and faculty need access to the internet.  We need to get onto BlackBoard, email, Seanet, and all of the other programs that rule over our academic worlds. Something has changed.

No one has the time or the patience to go to Randall Library, finally find an open computer and sit down just to find out it is busted—which is why it was not being used by someone else already. Instead, we have paid hundreds of dollars for the wireless devices so that we do not have to do that.

Students on UNC Wilmington’s campus had a great Wi-Fi connection last semester. Tablets, laptops, cell phones and gaming devices would be able to be connected to the campus wireless internet with ease. Notice the “would” and the “had.” What went wrong?

Undoubtedly, this new dysfunctional Hawk Wi-Fi is a security measure to thwart off the cyber thugs who have a pension for spreading their malicious viruses or want to steal your identity. It is amazing that so many people out there have nothing better to do but sit at their computers and figure out ways to ruin other people’s computers.

They call these sons-of-Satan “hackers,” but they are criminals. Maybe they didn’t get enough hugs when they were children. Maybe someone kicked over their sand castle, or shook them down for their lunch money at recess. What they need is several years on the couch of a reputable psychiatrist.

One used to be able to click onto their browser and zoom onto a web site, now one has to open up wireless device tab and manually connect to Hawk Wi-Fi. That does sound somewhat lazy, but when one gets used to doing things a certain way and then it goes haywire people get disturbed.

One used to be on an academic web site, game or social media site and spend uninterrupted quality time on their device. Now it’s slower than the way my 80 year old grandmother used to drive when she was alive. Not only slow, but one loses the internet connection. The range of the signal has shortened too; there is barely a signal while even sitting on the wall in front of Morton Hall nowadays.

Maybe this recent lack of ability to be online wirelessly is a sign from some higher power that we need to get off the gizmos, but it is highly unlikely. The higher power has much more important things to do than knock UNCW students and faculty off of their Wi-Fi’s. She’s busy figuring out how to get Bill Gates and the rest of them to solve world hunger and poverty. It would be nice if she started spending time zapping the mother boards of those lousy hackers, so we could get back to our Wi-Fi business while on campus.