You may have read the article in the Daily last Wednesday about webcams.

This cool technology is becoming more and more popular. I have a camera hooked up to my computer and I’ve seen them in quite a few other dorm rooms as well.

Unfortunately, if you live in the dorms you may not be able to take advantage of this technology. The recently introduced policy from Iowa State’s Academic Information Technology (AIT) does not allow students to send out enough information to broadcast a webcam on a regular basis.

Putting a live video of your dorm room on your web site for everyone to see it out of the question, and even videoconferencing with people across the internet more than a couple times a week is not allowed.

Unfortunately, I was the only member of the Inter-Residence Hall Association to vote against a bill supporting AIT’s proposal to limit Internet output. Instead I proposed a bill to only limit illegal use of the bandwidth, which is the primary cause of the increased Internet output.

I encourage you to call your IRHA hall representatives if you don’t like what they’re voting for. But for now, it looks like if you want to see what it’s like to have a live webcam broadcast in the residence halls, you are going to have to go rent “American Pie.”

I guess some things you see in the movies aren’t real, at least if you live in the residence halls.

Michael Mikkelsen

Junior

Computer science