Editorial: Laptops are a luxury; keep campus computers

By: Editorial Board

Posted: 9/22/08

Our View
Situation:	The journalism department and communication disorders and sciences departments are requiring freshmen to buy laptops.
Stance:	Students should not have to buy high tech computers because the university cannot sustain its own computer labs.

Yet another cost-cutting process has begun with the laptop initiative starting in two departments. The university is getting pretty close to a fine line that should never be crossed at Eastern.

The journalism department and communication disorders and sciences departments are requiring students to buy laptops with specific parameters for classroom purposes. The journalism department requires the purchase of a Macbook Pro with the Adobe Suites package, and the communication disorders department requires the purchase of a Hewlett-Packard.

The full effects of the journalism initiative will not be seen until 2013 because freshmen entering the university in the fall of 2009 will be the first class required to buy the computers.

The communication disorders and sciences initiative began this semester.

While there is a need to connect students to their technology necessities, requiring a computer purchase to save computer maintenance costs on campus is beyond reason.

"It's pretty clear that the university cannot upgrade and support all of the labs on campus unless the fee is hiked, which is unlikely," said James Tidwell, chair of the journalism department.

He said several studies have shown that students already buy computers upon entering college and simply providing specific components to have added onto that new computer won't burden students too much.

That reasoning is understandable, but requiring all students to do so is a bit much. Make an emphasis to incoming students because some chose not to buy computers or already own one.

Requiring students with at home accessible Adobe programs takes several excuses away from students who do not complete their assignments and allows other students to explore projects independently without being on campus.

"When our students are going out to their internship placements, the supervisors are saying 'Oh my gosh, they're teaching me what to do,'" said Gail Richard, chair of communication disorders and sciences. "They're really appreciating that our students are coming out so on top of the technology, so this is only going to help."

Having highly capable technology to keep beyond college is a plus when applying for jobs, but all this should be the students' choice.

Students make or break their own experiences at college, and some do what they can with the opportunities that they have. Financing is one of the main limitations to all college students and forcing financially unequipped students to buy what could be bought any time in life is wrong.

What's important is acquiring knowledge and skill, not hardware. And on-campus computer labs are supposed to be there for those who do not have the needed hardware to practice the skills of writing, graphic design, research and lesson planning.

The journalism department has 50 computers in three labs used for classes, one computer in the department's student lounge and four computers in the instructional technology center on the first floor of Buzzard Hall.

"I would think we would probably be down to five in each lab," Tidwell said. "We'd be down to maybe 20 total, but that's pure speculation at this point."

Tables would be brought into the classrooms for students to place laptops on, and the spare computers would be for non-journalism majors who may enroll in the classes. The university would also save money on software because the students would be required to purchase their own software licensing.

Having that software is a luxury, but because Eastern is constantly praised for being so affordable, a luxury should not become mandatory - Eastern is not at the level of schools like Duke, Harvard, University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana or University of Southern California.

Tidwell said much of the technology fees are used to upgrade classroom projectors, upgrade wireless Internet networks and installing smart boards into classrooms. He said those expenses keep increasing and restricting available funding for computer upgrades and maintenances.

"Other departments are probably going to follow suit depending on the discipline," Tidwell said. "I think the university is planning on getting down to four labs on campus to maintain."

There are 11 open labs on campus that have paid technicians monitoring the computers every hour of open lab and numerous departmental labs for class uses only such as three in the journalism department.

If proper research can show that upkeep of a designated number of computers is unnecessary because of declined usage, then remove them. Closing entire labs because of funding issues is not acceptable. If anything, completely stop buying smart boards because who cares if you can touch the wall or use the mouse at the computer which is often only 3 feet away from the board. Also, maybe not all of the classrooms need projectors in them.

Since all our fees keep going up anyway, reducing the unneeded expenses (smart boards and projectors) and a slight increase the technology fee could hold the university over until wireless Internet networks (one time expenses) are upgraded.

The laptop initiatives have good educational intentions behind them, but don't force the issue because the university has funding problems. Endorse the purchases, don't require them.