There’s a special kind of pain in watching your Google Doc say “Trying to reconnect…” just as you’re typing the final sentence of an essay due in five minutes. At Bucknell, that pain has become all too familiar.
The Wi-Fi here has a mind of its own— strong one minute, gone the next, especially when you need it most. It’s almost like it senses urgency and decides to test your patience for fun. Whether you’re in Larison, Vedder, Swartz or even a supposedly high-tech academic building, the experience is shared: someone sighs, someone refreshes their screen and someone else just gives up and switches to their phone’s hotspot.
“I literally have to go to the library just to turn in an assignment,” said Colin Caricato ’28, equal parts amused and exasperated. Another first-year, Meshkat Alam, added, “Sometimes the Wi-Fi disappears like my motivation during finals week.” We laugh about it, but behind the jokes is a real problem. It’s hard to focus when you don’t know if you’ll stay connected long enough to hit “submit.”
This isn’t just a minor glitch, it’s a daily obstacle. For a university that talks a lot about innovation and preparing us for a digital world, it’s ironic how often we’re stuck waving our laptops in the air like it’s 2006, trying to catch a signal. With group projects, Zoom calls, online lectures, internship applications and about a hundred tabs open at any given time, students depend on a reliable connection just to keep up.
To be clear, this isn’t about blaming Bucknell’s IT department. They’re helpful and responsive. But patching a weak system over and over doesn’t fix the fact that the system itself needs an upgrade. We shouldn’t be treating the Wi-Fi like a surprise guest— sometimes it shows up, sometimes it doesn’t.
We’re not asking for lightning-speed downloads or NASA-level servers (though that’d be nice). We just want consistency. In 2025, reliable Wi-Fi on a college campus shouldn’t be wishful thinking— it should be standard. If we can build state-of-the-art labs and smart classrooms, we should be able to scroll through Moodle without holding our breath.
Most of us have made peace with a lot: rising textbook prices, laundry machines that eat quarters, that one squeaky desk in the library. But unreliable Wi-Fi? That’s where we draw the line.
Bucknell, we love you. But please, let’s keep the signal strong and the buffering to a minimum. Our sanity (and our deadlines) depend on it.