MIT students log on for the loo lowdown

Shannon Cheng used to wander the halls of her dorm at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in a blurry-eyed haze every morning, trying to find an empty bathroom."The first four bathroom doors would be shut," says Cheng, now a grad student in aerospace engineering. "Wouldn't it be cool if you could just hook up something and find out which were open?" she asked a friend.

Say that at MIT, and it's bound to be taken as a challenge. And this was Random Hall, where students for years have been able to go online to check on the status of laundry-room washers and dryers.

Before long, students had wired a few of the full-suite bathrooms with light-switch indicators. But lights often got left on, leading to erroneous reports.

In July, a better "bathroom server" went online. This time, all 15 doors have sensors to indicate whether they're open — and the school paid for the project, says Riad Wahby, a senior in electrical engineering.

Students start classes today, but the server will be especially useful during finals, when it can mean not having to choose between hygiene and getting to a final on time. "It adds to our laziness," Wahby says.

Cheng doesn't live in the dorm anymore. But, like anyone else with Net access, "I guess I can still check."

Magazine names 100 most wired colleges

Speaking of wired schools, Yahoo Internet Life magazine's fifth annual 100 Most Wired Colleges list (October issue) goes to subscribers this week, and is on newsstands and online Sept. 18.

"Wherever you go you're pretty much guaranteed to get a good connection to the Internet," says editor Rob Bernstein. But details vary. Brown University, for instance, failed to get on the top 100 because it doesn't offer online registration. (Brown has said it wants students to register in person, he says.) The only Ivy League school in the top 20 is Dartmouth.

Technology isn't everything, but the list "can help you decide whether or not the school has the technological resources you're looking for," he says.

E-mail Janet Kornblum at [email protected].