...Or rather, it would if all of CFN's users lived in Cuyahoga County. If we accept the estimate that 51% of all CFN users connect via the Internet (Kutz, May 11) and assume that they do so because they live outside the area, only 5.55% of the county population uses the Free-Net. Even though this estimate is very rough, it does indicate that CFN has been remarkably successful at engaging the local community.
Since I lived in the Cleveland area for the duration of this study, I can add that Greater Cleveland covers an extremely large area which is impractical to cross without a car. The city is divided into east and west sides by the Cuyahoga River, and many Clevelanders perceive major cultural, ethnic, and class differences between the two halves of the city.
"The Cleveland Free-Net was born in 1986 as a research project in the Department of Family Medicine at Case Western Reserve University's School of Medicine. Assistant Professor Thomas M. Grundner was the principal investigator on the project. Dr. Grundner wrote proposals and eventually the University received funds and computing equipment from a variety of sources to assemble the hardware and software to create the Cleveland Free-Net." (¶2)As CFN's founder, Dr. Grundner has attained a sort of superhuman significance on the system. His name still appears frequently in posts to message forums more than six years after he left Case Western Reserve University (CWRU). "CFN's 'personality', for example, derives largely from the selection of community organizations which Grundner chose to recruit." (Kutz, Jun. 23)
"Use of the Cleveland Free-Net has grown rapidly: in 1994 there were 6 million user sessions. CWRU has invested more than $300,000 in grants and other revenue to support and improve the Cleveland Free-Net, and continues to spend more than $50,000 annually to operate the system. The Cleveland Free-Net has never charged a fee to a user, and it hopes never to do so." (Neff, ¶1)CFN's ties to CWRU affect its usership as well as its funding, since CWRU students are actively encouraged to become members.
"Because I'm a student at Case, I know that every student at Case has it really explained, the potential as well as how to set up an account ... I've heard of it because Case people have a special phone number to call in. ... and I hear if you use the the general public number it's almost always busy." (Twenty-Nine)In recent years, the system has become too popular:
"It used to be available at the library, but the library got all upset because people hogged up the terminals. Then they went to a twenty-minute format where you could have twenty minutes on Free-Net, which is cool. ... You can still get on Free-Net, if you know anything about computers, but you have to ... gain access to Internet, which is a bit involved in the public library terminals, and then telnet in." (Billi, Jun. 29)
"I just think it's been let go,... and they refuse donations and money, and I think if Case doesn't want to keep it up, other possibly nonprofits should be sought to handle it. ... if it costs a little bit of money per user, fine, but it's well worth it. ... it needs to have some people who care run it. It doesn't have that now. It has a university that is more interested in itself than it is in the community, and it therefore is not being kept up at all. It needs to be revamped. ... the University, I really think, is letting one heck of a resource go to pot." (Billi, Jun. 29)Another user was even more blunt:
"Their system is continuously malfunctioning, they don't want to put the $50,000 into it, and that's directly from the upper-echelon management, and frankly it's a 'Screw you' attitude, 'this is free, and if you don't like it you don't have to use it.' ... Like, the system will crash on Friday night, and it'll stay crashed all weekend, and they simply don't care. They'll put another band aid on it, that's all." (Eleven)I should mention at this point that during my research I became convinced that CWRU is not intentionally mismanaging the system, but I feel it is still important to demonstrate that some of the users do not mind expressing their frustration with the way it is being run.