To try and convince me that Tommy really is going away to college, yesterday we attended Freshman Orientation and registered Tommy for classes. The teenagers went one direction and the parents went another. I don’t know what Tommy’s orientation was like, but the parents basically go from one Q&A session to another. Someone from every department would give a 3 minute “everything will be okay” speech and then parents would interrogate the school official. One of our very first speakers bragged about the school’s early warning system that sends out text messages and e-mails when the campus has a crisis of any kind. Since we were sitting in a room with zero Internet access, I looked at my phone. No signal. For the rest of the 8 hour orientation, I was distracted by the bars on my cell phone. I walked in and out of rooms, up and down hallways and stuck my cell phone gripping hand out of windows and doorways. The only time I went above two bars was outside the buildings. WiFi is non-existent on the campus and cell phone coverage is terrible. How much good is their system really going to do anyone? I am leaving my child in the middle of nowhere with archaic technology. Osama bin Laden probably has faster communication in his cave than my son will have in the TN/KY mountains. I don’t care how tiny it is, all Universities need to have wireless options. Did I mention that using Outlook is forbidden on campus? Or that you MUST use Microsoft Office 2007 (no student discount available), but be sure to bring proof that you own that license? Or that P2P is illegal on campus? Also, the campus IT head discourages the use of Macs since they don’t know nothin’ ’bout them Macs. It’s like we’re sending our child to learn dinosaur veterinary medicine on Isla Nublar.