Here’s Andy Hogan, the Union’s Director of Community Advocacy, discussing the new cell phone amplifier in lower Usdan. Andy was the driving force behind the project and secured funding for it from the Office of Facilities Services.:
As of Monday morning, you can now use your cell phones in lower Usdan. The amplifier that was installed takes reception from outside and projects it into the building. If your phone has bad reception normally, than this is not too much of an improvement for you (sorry T-mobile users). However, if your phone gets normal reception outside, you will now be able to use it while eating in lower. As for the range of the amplifier, the stairs between upper and lower still has poor reception but I have been able to get service from Home Zone to the C-store. If you want to look for it, its installed on one of the walls of the skylight in the middle of lower.
As I was dormstorming during my campaign for North Quad Senator, one of the main issues people had was cell phone reception on campus. Many people’s phones did not even work in their dorm but mainly people complained about lower Usdan. At first, I looked for improving reception on the whole campus. When this proved too expensive and difficult to coordinate with the companies I looked specifically for lower Usdan. I found this amplifier and spoke to facilities about installing it. There have been many complaints about this project as a waste of funds in a time of cutting down, as a luxury. This is a useful project because even though we are cutting back it is important to always improve our campus. We should not just shut down in a time of crisis, we should fight for improvement and even luxuries. When I went around to my constituents, they gave me a way to improve the campus and as a student government representative I wanted to fulfill their suggestion.