Pam Eddinger, president of Bunker Hill Community College, is urging Congress to fund universal access to the internet in its next coronavirus relief bill.

Eddinger experienced a dramatic illustration of the digital divide’s impact on communities of color when Bunker Hill shut its campuses in Charlestown and Chelsea in March and migrated 1,700 courses online in order to guard against the spread of the coronavirus.

“Our students had mostly relied on the college itself as their infrastructure, they came in to use our [computer] labs. They used our wi-fi. When we switched everything online, we realized it’s not just flipping a switch,” she said Friday on Basic Black.

“We had to get together close to 800 Chrome books and get those delivered,” she added. “Students didn’t have wi-fi at home in order to tune in.”

Members of Congress have talked about focusing the next relief bill on infrastructure. Eddinger said they should go beyond the traditional road and bridge projects like those built under the Works Progress Administration during the Great Depression.

“This needs to be the 21st century WPA project to build infrastructure. If nothing else, build that internet highway across our community,” she said. “Skip one highway and build an internet highway. That will make the difference.”

Democrats have unsuccessfully pushed for expanded access to broadband in previous relief bills.

“There has not been one dollar allocated, and we are in a presidential election season. So it is going to be up to us to raise our voices,” Renee Richardson Gosline, a senior lecturer at MIT, said on the public affairs show.

Roxbury Community College has faced the same challenges as Bunker Hill in moving more than 350 courses online. RCC distributed 100 laptops and made it possible to access courses on smartphones, President Valerie Roberson said in an email.

“Some students and faculty had connectivity issues. RCC purchased and distributed approximately 50 hotspots,” Roberson said. “The college also shared information from cell phone data providers, many of whom increased data usage for users at no cost.”

A federal solution would be better than the improvised approaches that the two community colleges have had to take, Eddinger said.

“I hope, on the federal level, the [next] stimulus package will have some accommodation for universal wi-fi,” she said.