The river Cherwell hasn’t turned to blood. It hasn’t hailed since February. There are no locusts on Broad Street, nor frogs in the Bodleian, nor lice in the Covered Market (actually, who knows). Why, then, are we still plagued by the Single Sign-On?
The older, simpler authentication service, Shibboleth, I could begrudgingly respect; its reptilian cousin, the SSO, I cannot. This perverse imposition of about 2 minutes of inconvenience each morning introduces an unparalleled irritation to the daily routine. The requirement, as many will know, is this: you have to authorize your identity via a mobile phone to access any online university service. One wonders what the point of passwords is.
The function must be security. I might almost appreciate the sentiment, but the non-consensual element seems bizarre. We are no longer at liberty, it seems, to leave ourselves open to the option of potentially having our e-mails hacked. Given the relatively low stakes of student information exchange, the SSO appears pointless. Who could possibly be after my e-mails? For those of us that sleep with college librarians or share salacious images online with dentists, I can understand the urge to opt-in. As I’m not I’d like to opt-out.
If the university IT department wants to play CIA, leave me out of the game. Trust me, no one’s trying to hustle JSTOR. Well, apparently, there is a market in Asia for filched academia, but who really knows? What’s really troubling, though, is the lack of explanation and warning. How has the SSO so swiftly convinced us that it’s special? Don’t be fooled by its warm bluish hues and comforting Calibri font. It is fire and brimstone, James Corden and Bridge Thursdays. It is all the worst parts of Oxford life succinctly condensed into one IT micro-aggression.
Most insidiously, it reduces productivity. Not only does it add to the clutter of pestering responsibilities that rob us of our ergonomic morning freshness, but it now means we have to have mobile phones with us at all times. Never again can a trip to the library be unaccompanied by technological distraction and there are few facts about student life that are as depressing. At a time when ADHD diagnoses are skyrocketing and most university counsellors recommend limiting screen time to improve mental health, the SSO seems almost Orwellian in its grim, self-justified necessity. How bored, one wonders, must the IT fellows have been to think up something like this. Still, it’s an impressive achievement: they’ve managed to bureaucratize SOLO.
This kind of tokenistic “look-we’re-doing-something-helpful” attitude has seeped into every corner of routine Oxford life. Meals in some colleges still have to be signed up for online like flu jab appointments. Also, what feels like an inexplicable hangover from COVID regulations, some libraries still limit available desks. Even now, the Law Library maintains its rather theatrical red and white ticker tape over prohibited desks. Regrettably, many of these condemned seats are in the quality spots.
I’m afraid there’s little we can do. The Oxford IT lobby won’t reply to my many e-mails demanding answers and there is now seldom a desk in the Rad Cam unadorned by an iPhone. We are seeing a second Alexandria in the death of the Oxford library experience. This death, however, is not of one disaster but of a thousand minuscule frustrations. This frustrating front has found its charismatic leader in the SSO.
Image: Glenn Carstens-Peters via Unsplash
