Saint Xavier University students have relied on technology for the past few years. The Hub, the school’s go-to center for technology issues, has promised to aid students, faculty, and staff with any school-related issues, but has this promise truly been fulfilled?
Over the past week, I have gathered stories from multiple students about issues they have encountered when dealing with The Hub in terms of timeliness and service.
A big issue many students seem to run into with The Hub is that the computer lab’s swipe access has not worked all school year. Multiple students need this lab to be open in order to work on any of the programs on the Adobe Suite. In my own classes, deadlines for projects have had to be moved more than once because of the lab being locked and/or the Adobe programs being down.
Another problem many people have brought up has been The Hub’s untimely manner of handling issues. Senior Jena Said was having a glitch on Canvas that would not allow her to submit a timed test. When she called The Hub and made them aware of the situation and the time constraint, she was still left on hold for 30-35 minutes, and ended up hanging up.
Similarly, junior Julian Juarez Butler had this experience to share during a VIA orientation session, “I submitted a ticket, and, you know, they got back to it pretty quickly, but yet, they didn’t fix the problem, and once I said they didn’t fix the problem, they went back and forth complaining about it. But then, I had to go out of my way to ask a friend who works at The Hub, who had to contact a full time staff member to fix it.”
The last issue that was brought to my attention was when sophomore Cassidy Dawson’s class had rented out a set of laptops from The Hub to take an exam. When the laptops were delivered to her class, none of them were charged, which resulted in the students not being able to start their tests until 20 minutes later.
Personally, I have had my own negative experiences with The Hub. As the president of SXU Drama, I’ve had to consult The Hub multiple times throughout my two years at SXU.
This year, we asked The Hub to borrow two lavalier and two over-the-ear microphones. This information was repeated multiple times, but on the day of our show, we received two lavalier and two handheld microphones. After returning the microphones and telling the student worker at the desk what happened, I was never offered an apology or explanation.
Similarly, when preparing for SXU Drama’s first show in April 2022, we were never allowed access to the light booth without any explanation, despite having a stage manager who is very knowledgeable on how to work lights.
When students are paying such a high price for tuition, they should be able to expect satisfactory help from service providers such as The Hub.
While mistakes are always bound to happen, it should not be so frequent to the point where most students I spoke to said they had negative feedback about The Hub. Similarly, any sort of lack of staff or student workers is no excuse for the way many students, and even professors, are treated so rudely by both some staff members and some student workers.
The Hub has a duty to provide adequate service to faculty, staff, and students, and if those services are not being provided, then there might be some underlying issue that needs to be looked into.
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