While a small college in Canada known as Lakehead University made international headlines after shutting down campus wireless due to purported health risks from electromagnetic forces, Stanford continues to blaze ahead in its expansion of wireless Internet access on campus.

Richard Holeton, head of Residential Computing, disputed the allegations made by Lakehead’s president on CNN.

“That claim must have something to do with the fact that wireless operates on the same radio frequency as, for example, microwave ovens,” he said. “You might argue that they’re slowly being cooked, but it’s so slow that I think that it’s negligible. I don’t know of any solid research that shows there’s a serious health risk from wireless. The signal is so small that it’s hard to imagine. No one that I know of here has taken it seriously enough to raise it as a health issue.”

Senior Zi Shen Lim, a residential computing consultant at Roble, agreed that he found Lakehead’s decision questionable.

“It’s kind of like the cell phone thing,” he said. “Some people do some research and they think it’s a reason to be worried about it, but I personally am not worried about it. There aren’t enough reasons to worry about things like that. If you want to be worried about connections, you should be worried about cell phones because you’re carrying it next to you.”

Convinced that the risks posed by wireless, if any, are negligible to the point of being non-existent, health concerns are taking the back seat to convenience as the University continues to push for expanded wireless service.

The project, which began three years ago, has yet to meet its goal of ubiquitous wireless connection on campus. Currently, wireless is available in a number of residences, as well as in public areas such as the libraries, the Quad, academic departments and Tresidder Union, co-supported by Academic Computing and ITSS.

“They have been pretty successful including coverage for about 75 percent of the undergraduate residences on campus,” Holeton said. “The graduate residences have been moving slower and we’re making good progress now. The Escondido Village low rises are about two-thirds completed and we hope that the Escondido Village low rises will be done by this summer. We have plans in the works for the studios in the graduate residences. Likewise, we’re trying to move ahead with the rest of the undergraduate residences that don’t have wireless yet.”

Though Residential Computing currently lacks sufficient funds to immediately expand wireless to all areas at the present, Holeton said that the University is working as quickly as possible to bring wireless to the largest number of people possible.

“We’ve tried to move it in ways to have the greatest impact that we could by deploying in it in whole complexes whenever possible,” he said. “Another thing that we do is piggyback onto capital improvement projects.”

While Holeton deemed the progress successful so far, he added that some buildings such as Roble have been held off from immediate wireless installation due to practical reasons.

“It’s about to undergo renovation, so as part of the renovation, it will be made wireless ready,” he said. “So meanwhile, what we did is go out and install wireless in the common areas as a partial measure. Our standard is to make it available everywhere in all student rooms and in the outdoor areas, and Roble is one exception we made while it is awaiting renovation.”

Lim also added that the expansion is a product of consistent student demand.

“Many people have asked for it,” he said. “We’ve seen it in the residential survey. There’s the computer part and every year people have mentioned that we want wireless. That’s pretty much the main concern. But it’s been getting better. You’re getting connections at more places.”

Freshman Sarah Spikes fully supported the expansion project.

“My computer doesn’t work on wired, because I have hardware issues, so I depend solely on wireless,” she said. “This means it’s really inconvenient when the wireless is spotty. It should be available on the entire campus.”