The EMU will look different next fall if student leaders give a national organization the OK to set up a large kiosk offering free Internet access in exchange for local and national advertising.
National company Campus Link pitched its product to the EMU Board on March 29. The organization wants to put a large kiosk in the EMU that would include computer terminals to connect students to local and national businesses and provide campus maps and information to visitors and new students. It would also offer access to e-mail accounts and telephones. Students would have unlimited access to the phone and Internet services.
In return, Campus Link would pay the EMU to place the kiosk and businesses would have the opportunity to advertise in one of the hubs of student activity on campus.
“I am interested in this,” Student Senate President and EMU Board member Jessica Timpany said. “It’s a wonderful service to students and we don’t pay for it directly. They pay us by selling advertising. We would profit from it and so would local businesses.”
Timpany said Campus Link has placed these terminals in colleges and universities such as UCLA, UC-Santa Barbara, Southern California, five California state schools, Arizona State, Michigan State and various other locations on the West Coast.
ASUO Vice President and EMU Board member Mitra Anoushiravani had some disagreements with installing the Campus Link services. The main controversy of implementing the program, expressed by Anoushiravani, was the advertising Campus Link would promote in exchange for its service.
“I don’t like the idea of prostituting our campus,” she said. “While it is a great service, with our sensitivity to commercials, right now it is not in the best interest of the students. I still have a lot of questions. My mind isn’t made up.”
Although Student Senator and EMU Board member C.J. Gabbe said Campus Link could boost students’ access to technology, he also sees a potential problem in “commercializing the EMU.” To remedy the situation, Gabbe, along with other members of the EMU Board, will be working to contact other schools, such as UCLA, to find out what students think of the resource center.
“I have seen it at UCLA in the student union building and it wasn’t particularly busy,” Gabbe said.
Jerry Mann, director of the Ackerman Student Union and Student Support Services at UCLA, said that so far his school has been happy with the student-based decision to install the Internet services provided by Campus Link.
“We have a six-unit board and Campus Link worked closely with us to define the board to our specifications,” Mann said. “The six stations are busy all the time.”
UCLA originally initiated a five-year contract with Campus Link but has recently extended the contract another two years. Campus Link proposed either a seven- or 10-year contract with the University of Oregon.
“We have derived income from Campus Link, roughly five grand a year,” Mann said. “We benefit from access to the Internet we receive that we do not have to maintain.”
EMU Business Manager Susan Racette, who was at the presentation, said that placing donated computers in the EMU without advertising could be an alternative.
“There are other alternatives that may be more beneficial than Campus Link, but it would be a way for an organization like the EMU to bring information into the building,” she said.
Racette said Campus Link would not cost the University anything and the four to eight computers in the booth would link students to the Internet without the inconvenience of going into the computer lab.
Jim Bohle, assistant director of Administrative Service at the University Computing Center, said the difference between Campus Link and other kinds of portals, such as Yahoo or Excite, is that those portals allow users access anywhere and anytime.
“They are not built on physical advertising,” he said. “The product, as I understand it, would give access to shopping, but only to vendors they have consigned with.”
There would be approximately 150 vendors from which the University could choose.
Bohle said the Campus Link station would not directly provide students to services such as Duck Web and will not offer smart messaging, which allows transactions, such as dropping a class and automatically notifying another student who might want to fill the opening.
The decision on whether to implement the Campus Link kiosk is far from being finalized. Board members said they will continue to research the pros and cons of the issue, then address it at their April 12 meeting.