While downloading music and movies on personal computers seriously aggravates the campus network, causing slow Internet service and frequent crashes, downloading other materials on university computers may cause fewer problems.

Doug Lawhead, a microsystem support specialist who oversees computer labs in the journalism and art departments, said he often finds downloaded material from fonts to chat softwares in university labs.

“There’s just a wealth of free fonts you can find,” he said.

While the materials do not cause a significant problem in the speed or performance of the computers, an ethical question is proposed.

“Only people who are appointed by the university are supposed to be installing anything,” Lawhead said.

Computers are supposed to be used for educational purposes and when students start downloading chat services like AOL Instant Messenger and Netscape Instant Messenger, they use time on computer that could be used better, Lawhead said.

“The machines aren’t there for that use,” he said. “They are there for the students to learn.”

When computer users download materials, they also risk bringing in viruses, cluttering the desktop and conflicting with other software already installed, he said.

“It doesn’t affect the speed, but the bottom line is it doesn’t belong there,” Lawhead said.

However, Lawhead said he finds many more failed attempts to download than actual installed material. Most computers in the smaller labs are equipped with technology that prevents the installation of most programs.

“We have a way to find out where and when it happened to find out who did it,” Lawhead said, though he was not aware of any disciplinary action for installing software.

Though the downloaded material may be a problem in smaller labs, the 24-hour Gregg Triad lab and several other labs have found a way to work around the difficulties to better serve students.

Over the past four years, Tim Wilkerson, a lab support specialist, said he and his colleagues have noticed an increase of students who need to download software for class.

Since the computer labs exist to serve the student, larger labs have installed Sheriff software. The program allows downloaded material to be installed and can then be easily and

automatically erased when the computer is rebooted, he said.

“More and more professors are using software,” he said. “Now they can install the software, do their homework and be done with it.”

The Sheriff software is a more practical approach to the installed software because it is cheaper than constantly rebuilding the computers to make them compatible.