We are writing this letter to address some misconceptions and concerns of the residence hall students regarding the Internet output cap issue.

First of all, we would like to state that we are NOT introducing legislation to reduce the amount of information sent from the ISU network.

We are writing legislation addressing a policy sent to us from the Provost’s office regarding limitation of Internet output. We are not supporting a limit to our constituents’ Internet usage, we are supporting AIT dealing with persons who ARE limiting our constituents’ Internet usage. Forty percent of all outgoing information is sent from just 20 computers on the ISU network.

Secondly, this is not a new policy. This type of limitation has always been in effect. When AIT sees there is a problem, they contact the individual causing the problem and ask them to limit their usage.

The problem is that there was no objective limit, and people would have no way of telling if they were approaching or exceeding that limit. This policy clarifies what that limit is and what measures will be taken if the excessive use is not stopped.

The proposed policy is AIT’s way of dealing with an out-of-hand situation in the most hands-off manner possible. This policy is not even going to affect 95 percent of our constituents.

It simply doesn’t apply to them; they don’t even come close to approaching the 200-megabyte-per-day limit. The average daily output from 95 percent of computers on campus is 13-megabytes.

This policy is not going to affect Internet surfing, e-mail or intra-campus transfers at all.

It is our conclusion from days of heavy research and many meetings on this issue that the policy proposed by AIT is well thought out, and is the best way to handle this situation.

Read the policy and the code of acceptable computer ethics found at www.ait.iastate.edu/ethics, and if you believe that you have a legitimate, legal, educationally related reason to exceed the proposed limit, we believe you have a reason to take to AIT to be considered exempt from this policy.

For more information, and the policy and bill itself, please visit www.public.iastate.edu/~dboike/netcap.

Matt Heerema

Junior

Management information systems and psychology

Vice President

TRA

David Boike

Sophomore

Electrical Engineering

UDA At-Large Representative

IRHA

Pat Blair

Junior

Liberal studies

Director of Special Events

IRHA