By Signe K. Skinion

Campus residence halls may have computers by early next year, Information Technology officials told student government leaders Tuesday.

Mike Williams, IT executive director, said at a meeting of the Undergraduate Student Government and Residence Hall Association that students living on campus may see computers in their rooms by January.

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Williams said at the February SIU Board of Trustees meeting, trustees passed a proposal allowing IT to send information to vendors to see how much it would cost to put every campus residence hall room online.

The board making this step is a huge leap in getting the University in the technology direction, Williams said.

Williams said it will take about nine months to implement the program.

He said it will take one month to get the information to the vendors, then four or five months for the vendors to respond. Williams said it will take University officials three months to review the proposals and another month to put the residence halls online.

We’re looking at next January to start putting computers in the residence halls, Williams said.

Ed Jones, University Housing director, said this program is needed at SIUC.

This (the program) is definitely something that needs to happen, Jones said. We are in an information age, and we need to get students involved as soon as possible.

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Also, Williams said the Saluki Net is a new system available for students on the Web that IT is still working on.

With Saluki Net, a student can access any personal information from any desktop computer, Williams said. Through this, you can call up information on yourself, like your Bursar bill, your next paycheck even Health Service information.

Williams said a student can access the information on Saluki Net by punching their student identification number and personal pin number into the computer. He said this is the same type of information available on the telephone program, UniLink, but students do not have to wait for the line to be free.

The Saluki Net web address is http//:www.siu.edu:1869