Are you studying at Belmont? Are you a gamer? Do you want to cultivate your hobby in your dorm room? That's great! Now brace yourself, pal, because you're in for a surprise. Belmont University uses Internet restrictions to maintain connection safety, which collaterally renders access to most game servers impossible.

In recent years, online gaming gained in significance and popularity as the Internet connectivity became faster and more accessible. As a result, the numbers of people engaging in this particular past-time have been growing steadily, thus gaming becoming for some almost comparable to Facebooking or video chatting. Therefore, it is not surprising that video games, as a method of spending free time, are also popular among students at Belmont. Several said they are unhappy with the connection situation on campus, but there may be solutions in some cases.

"It really bothers me," said Jesse Breeze, an 18-year-old classical voice major and a gamer. Blocking everything is unnecessary. Another gamer, Phil Burch, 19, says the only games he can play online here are those designed for the X-Box gaming console and World of Warcraft, which seems to be the only game for PC with unaffected access.

X-Box seems like a possible solution to the problem, but first, not everybody has the console and, next, most online games were designed for PCs, which are most affected by access restrictions. Burch used to play a couple of PC online games that he really enjoyed before he came to Belmont, but due to the school policy he had to abandon them. "It really limits me," he said.

Residence staff is aware of the problem but does not seem to have a solid idea of how to help.

“We had some complaints from our residents,” said Jared Black, residence director of Pembroke Hall. “They are frustrated that they are not able to go online.”

 Black’s response to such cases is to recommend that students who feel a change is in order organize and file a petition for unblocking the respective ports. He said it’s not likely that one or two voices would make a difference. In comparison, Ileia Luke, RD at Hail Hall, said gamers should make a complaint to the Student Government Association. A residence assistant at Hail Hall, Mike Chow, said he believes it is impossible for students to influence any changes in this particular matter.

Randy Capps, network manager at Belmont, said that the school does restrict Internet access by blocking various ports. By doing so, they try to make it safer for students to use the Internet on campus and to prevent illegal activities, such as downloading copyrighted media and software.

Interestingly, Capps noted that reconfiguring the system is possible. “Since none of us here are gamers, we don’t know which games are popular at the time,” Capps said, “but we could unblock a game if we knew its name and which ports it uses.” The strategy is simply to call the network management’s office and provide them with the necessary data, then wait a couple of days while the technicians check on the game.

Acquiring information on port numbers of a game is a relatively easy task, at least compared to getting credible data on Internet procedures from first contact sources at Belmont. In most cases it requires only getting in touch with the customer service staff of the respective game via the official Web site.