Originally Published in the March 21st Print Publication
The sleek design, a bright 14-inch screen, and basically no lag. That is a Macbook Pro, but we can’t bring those or any personal computers to school anymore. With the school’s strict, new, no personal computer policy, many students have been restricted from bringing their personal devices, even if they work better and are much more convenient.
I used to bring my personal Macbook to school; it worked great, and all my stuff was organized just how I wanted it. Now that I can’t bring it to school anymore, I have to suffer through using my laggy school Chromebook, which dies all the time and takes forever to load.
Many other students also used to bring their personal computers and they have similar, if not the same views as me on this new rule. A strong reaction from Avni Panchal, a junior, was: “I want my personal computer back now!!” She claimed that with her personal computer, she could contact her parents more easily when needed. Another thing she said was that the school computers block so many websites that are actually school-appropriate, so having her personal computer made it so much easier to get work done. I think from the student point of view, personal computers were amazing.
Though I believe that personal computers aren’t causing much harm to anyone, there were a few points that the school made that were reasonable as to why they wouldn’t want students to bring their own computers to school. The first of which being that teachers couldn’t monitor students’ screens, which could lead to problems with academic dishonesty/cheating. Additionally, many students could use their computers to text, call, or use hotspots to go on social media apps and other apps prohibited on school wifi. Some things the principal, Dr. Mcdowell, pointed out were that people would play violent/first-person shooter games on their computers, which is prohibited at school. Another situation he mentioned was that if students had technology issues, Ms. Nygren could not help them, which could make things way harder for students. The last thing of his claims was that the school spent a lot of money on the school-issued devices, and they don’t want that to go to waste. However, seeing as these are some good points, I think some better solutions would be to require students to use school-issued computers for tests/assessments so that teachers can monitor screens and otherwise allow personal computers. An added rule to that could be that students who were caught or warned doing things on their personal computers multiple times would not be allowed to bring them to school anymore.