STUDENTS RUSH TO GET PLUGGED IN

DATE                  09/27/94
NEWSPAPER             THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER
SECTION               NEWS
EDITION               MORNING
PAGE                  a01
STORY LENGTH          28 INCHES
HEADLINE              STUDENTS RUSH TO GET PLUGGED IN  //    UCI: For many at 
                         university, the first day of school is also the first 
                         day  on the Internet. The ability to partake of 
                         E-mail is the primary lure.
BYLINE/CREDIT         DAN FROOMKIN:  The Orange County Register
SUBJECT TERMS         COLLEGES:STUDENTS:COMPUTERS:OC
 .
  Shelley Rutkoske, 18, got one so her father can nag her at the
  speed of light; Melissa Sanchez, 22, got one so she can turn in her
  homework.
     Whatever their reasons, students at the University of
  California, Irvine, are clamoring for Internet accounts -- and the
  ability to send and receive E-mail -- in a rush so intense it would
  make any fraternity envious.
     Monday was the first day of classes at UCI, but for many
  students, the significance went beyond that: It was their first day
  hooked into a massive computer network that links students with
  each other, their professors and the world.
     "I have a lot of friends who just moved to different states, and
  they all have it," said Janine Harris, 24, a junior English major
  taking part in the latest university rite of passage: standing in
  line to get online.
     "It's a lot more fun than writing letters," said freshman Visant
  Sanathara, 17. "When you write letters, you actually have to write
  letters. Then you have to go to the post office and send them."
     The ability to send electronic mail to anyone on the Internet is
  only one of the many services available with the accounts, which
  can be tapped from home if students have their own computers and
  modems, or at any of the university's several computer labs.
     If precedent holds, many of the students who signed up for free
  "easy access" accounts Monday will soon find themselves making
  small talk on chat networks, playing interactive, multiplayer
  fantasy games -- and maybe even navigating through the billions of
  bits of information at their fingertips.
     It's E-mail that lures them in, though.
     "My dad wants me to write him," Rutkoske said.
     Sanchez, a senior majoring in English, got a computer account
  because the instructor of English 28a: The Poetic Imagination, like
  an increasing number of teachers at UCI, made it a class
  requirement.
     "Say we're reading a poem," Sanchez said. "Instead of turning in
  a written response saying I thought this and this and this about
  the poem, we send it on E-mail."
     Said junior Kamber Williams, 20: "I needed an E-mail account to
  find out my schedule for work."
     Freshman Andrea Nguyen, 17, said she wants E-mail "to keep in
  touch with my old friends from high school."
     And although she realizes she can use her Internet account in
  other ways, she's wary of that much-talked-about information
  superhighway. "I just hope I don't get lost," she said.
     Some students weren't even sure what they were getting. They
  just knew they wanted it.
     "What is E-mail?" freshman Erin Wong, 18, asked as she waited in
  line. "I don't know. I hear you can send people things."
     About half of UCI's 15,000 students are now online, and
  university administrators say it's not an accident.
     University Registrar Michael Thompson said UCI officials have
  identified electronic access for students as a major goal.
     "Some of us feel quite strongly that for our students to be
  succesful citizens in the 21st century, they have to be able to
  travel the world electronically," he said.
     Stephen Franklin, one of the university officials overseeing the
  distribution of computer accounts, said 169 students signed up on
  Monday alone, bringing the total to almost 1,000 in the past week.
     Access to the Net is no longer a rarity for students, and for
  good reason, he said.
     "You can't live without it," he said. "It's part of the basis of
  the academic community. . . . It's become a communication medium,
  not a computational medium."
     Or, as a first-year graduate student of philosophy, Jeff
  Yoshimi, 24, put it as he logged on: "It's just the information
  revolution."

  (SIDEBOX)
  All about E-mail

     What is E-mail? Even some of the students signing up for
  Internet accounts at the University of California, Irvine, weren't
  sure -- they just knew they had to have it.
     E-mail stands for electronic mail.
     The term encompasses a whole range of messages, short or long,
  sent on any computer system -- from little ones inside a single
  office, to colossal ones such as the computer network called the
  Internet.
     Every user with a computer on the Internet -- and there are
  millions worldwide -- has an Internet "address" to which anyone on
  the network can send mail.
     And on the Internet, mail travels almost instantaneously along
  interconnected cables at no cost to the sender or recipient, no
  matter how far or close they are.

  Register staff writer Dan Froomkin can be reached by E-mail at
  froomkin@ocr1.freedom.com