Grossmont Community College officials have been violating these requirements since the school’s Tech Mall computer lab opened in June 2004. Located in the Learning and Technology Resource Center, the 178-computer facility was designed to provide supervised tutoring to students needing extra help with their coursework. However, since the facility opened, students have been allowed to utilize the computers for any purpose, including accessing personal e-mail, playing games and surfing the Internet.

“We did hear about one community college that had been reporting falsely, and so the State Chancellor’s office wants to make sure that we’re all in compliance,” said Kathleen Gustafson, GCC’s Associate Dean of Instructional and Technology Resources. “We have been for the most part, but we weren’t real tight. So we’re just tightening up.”

According to state regulations, students must be assigned to use the Tech Mall computers via a written referral by a counselor or instructor “on the basis of an identified learning need.” However, current GCC policy allows all students to sign up for the non-credit, non-fee tutoring course without a note. Before the opening of the new center, students were required to get a card signed by their counselor or professor that allowed them to use the computer tutoring services. This led to a backlog in the administration and records office, which had to enter them into the system by hand. Now, students are allowed to add themselves to the system. Gustafson said students are asked by staff how they found out about the center, and that counselors who refer students keep in close contact with the center to let them know of the referral.

To obtain an attendance record at the Tech Mall, students are required to log in before going to a computer station and log out when they leave. Yet, sometimes students don’t lot out and those records are identified as anomalies by administrators and removed from the reporting log, Gustafson said. Currently, the Tech Mall staff, in conjunction with the Chancellor’s office, is looking into a better way of tracking student referrals and attendance.

Gustafson blames the problems on trial and error.

“We didn’t know how busy the lab was going to be, whether or not the students would come and use the machines, and our use has grown tremendously,” she said. “And so now we’re saying ‘Okay, we need to make sure that the work that is being done on those computers is for educational purposes.’”

Earlier this month, in light of state regulators cracking down on schools that misreport, GCC administrators attempted to curtail the students’ unrestricted use of the computers by posting on the computers new Tech Mall rules. They included:

• No Web surfing; no online chatting, no games; and no e-mail, audio or video other than course-related.

• All students must be referred by an instructor in writing.

• All users must log into a station and the network, and log out of both services.

The rules were posted on computer desktops for approximately three days and taken down after students protested.

Gustafson claims the rules were posted as a trial.

“We just pulled a document to see how it would come out, and I think when that showed up on several screens people started getting upset about it,” she said. “So we said, ‘I guess it’s not working,’ and we pulled it back. These are not the new rules.”

There are currently no plans to post a new set of rules telling students that the Tech Center is for coursework only. However, one proposed solution would be to prohibit non-coursework computer use in the Tech Mall but allow it in the school’s two smaller computer areas, Tech I and Tech II. The state does not provide funding for these computers labs. Users would not be required to sign in, as is required in the Tech Mall. Each of these rooms holds 24 stations and when full, use would be limited to a one hour maximum. Computers would be available only when a class is not using them.

Students are concerned that the approximately 48 computers allotted for miscellaneous use will result in hours of wait time.

“I think [the changes] would create a whole lot more problems than solutions,” said Crystal Sudano, student and director of publicity and campus activities. “That’s my opinion, and I have a lot of friends on campus who would have the same opinion. And it would be interesting to see how it would be monitored.”

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