As we know, TAMS cuts off McConnell Hall WiFi from 1AM to 6AM each day throughout the week. The goal of this policy is to get students to sleep, and in theory, it should work. However, it doesn’t. In fact, it is likely that it hurts more than helps. This ineffective policy is becoming more and more divisive, especially during this pandemic. Students at McConnell hall will be forced to follow the WiFi cutoff, but students studying from home will not. This is a disparity that puts unfair restrictions on those who are moving into McConnell this upcoming semester. On top of this, most, if not all, of our classes will be online this next school year. That means that many of the resources for our classes will be online as well, so there is a heightened risk of preventing (mostly socioeconomically disadvantaged) students from accessing academic resources to be successful throughout the school year.

It has already been proven that the cutoff does not work because there are many ways around it. A student can use Ethernet, their cellular service, a WiFi hotspot, or even go to the edge of A-wing to reach the Bruce Hall WiFi. If a student needs to finish an essay, they will try to find a way to do that. If a student wants to stay up past 1AM, they will do that, even if the WiFi is cut off.

For some, it may be a minor inconvenience, but it can significantly affect the grades of some others. This policy can easily exacerbate socioeconomic differences because there are many people that cannot afford an unlimited data plan or a hotspot with a high data cap. By removing the cutoff, we level the playing field so that everyone, even the minority who can’t afford alternative ways of accessing the internet, has access to WiFi at all times.

Since this policy looks good in theory, it looks good to parents who don’t understand the reality of the cutoff. The policy has stayed in place out of concern for how parents would react without it. These concerns are valid, but this policy doesn’t actually incentivize sleeping. It teaches students to rely on someone else to tell them to take care of themselves. Sure, this can work for a few select people in the short term, but it makes matters worse in the long term. TAMS is an educational institution at its heart; its ultimate goal is to take in students and help them learn to be more knowledgeable academically and to be better people. Instead of using this policy to approach the wellbeing of the students, the Administration should focus on ways to teach students how to take care of themselves. There will not be a WiFi cutoff after leaving TAMS, so will students be able to regulate their own sleep schedules by then? Or will they need to rely on someone else to tell them to go to sleep? Right now, this system is set up for students to have to rely on someone else. So, how do we change?

Well, we start with the obvious. The first step is to rescind the WiFi cutoff. After that, TAMS needs to hold some seminars throughout the school year to emphasize the importance of self-care and accountability. This can include bringing in professors and experts in sleep health to talk about the importance of sleep; it can include encouraging students to not take on too much work that they can’t get a healthy amount of sleep; it can include advocating for personal responsibility by emphasizing features on their devices that can regulate when they can be on their phone or remind them to go to bed. Giving students the resources to be autonomous when it comes to their personal health may be one of the best things that the TAMS Administration can do to make TAMS students even better people, even after they leave TAMS.