Given the existing financial situation of the state and the university, any decision to write a check for $300,000 should be made carefully. Given the university’s mission to demonstrate a high ethical standard, a diverse academic environment for intellectual investigation and to maintain a reliable technological infrastructure, it seems almost unbelievable that the Computing Advisory Council would be seriously considering writing that $300,000 check to Microsoft.

The Sherman Antitrust Act was established in 1890 to stop large corporations from illegally extending their monopoly powers.

Congress wisely reasoned that these monopolies squelch the competitive creativity that fuels our capitalist society. So what message is the university sending the student body and the tax paying residents of our state when it spends well over a quarter of a million dollars in an apparent effort to actually extend Microsoft’s already illegal monopoly powers?

In our relentless pursuit of convenience we have come close to producing a nearly perfect computing monoculture, thereby ensuring anything but convenience.

Computer worms, viruses and Trojan horses easily spread through the endless fields of Microsoft servers, operating systems and software applications.

As any Iowa farmer would be glad to tell you, maintaining a monoculture is a very expensive proposition. So why then would the university encourage the further development of just such a monoculture?

A monoculture that will ensure escalating costs of ownership, reduce the already flaccid competition in the technology world and help strengthen the anti-competitive position of an illegal monopoly? Just what (and where) is the compelling evidence that a $300,000 check to Microsoft is warranted?

There is no doubt the Microsoft Campus Agreement is unfair – it taxes all students to provide software for the few that can afford the new PCs required to run it. And while the university should be the one place that actively pursues the benefits of a diverse computing environment, it is instead contemplating a very expensive, long-term partnership with a disreputable corporate entity that will clearly serve to reduce diversity, complicate security and cost us a bundle to boot.

It’s my sincere hope that the university will not choose to follow the path of least resistance in pursuit of shortsighted goals that will haunt us in the future.

If the CAC has $300,000 a year to invest in technology on campus, then let it invest in diversity, security and stability. Let it invest in technology that doesn’t encourage an illegal monopoly, and let it invest in all the students computing efforts rather than the few.

Finally, it shouldn’t be lost on those grappling with this decision that Microsoft is not above playing hardball – even with taxpayer supported, non-profit institutions of higher education. Last year, Microsoft threatened the University of Iowa with a lawsuit, purportedly for allowing university students to use unlicensed Microsoft applications.

Regardless of whether they ever expected to win, they knew well that Iowa was in no position to engage in an expensive court battle.

According to the Daily Iowan, the suit was dropped when the university agreed to enter into a similar financial arrangement that Iowa State is currently considering.

Was Iowa State threatened as well? How about the other 54 universities across the United States that are currently contemplating similar misguided pacts with Microsoft? The speed with which these decisions must be made have left little time to examine the details, little time for concerned faculty, students and staff to organize a defense.

Joe Monahan

Digital media producer

Engineering distance education