Tools Rush In

Dear Dec,

I swear, Dec, I'm having frequent and conspicuous conniption fits from the sheer scale of the point-missing going on in this whole required-computers debate. Points are being missed all over the place. Points over here, points over there, but everyone's missing them. My neck vertebrae are killing me from all the back-and-forth swiveling my head's been performing lately. My ocular muscles especially and their neighboring areas are feeling tender, what with all the eye-rolling and bewildered blinking I've been doing due to the cataclysmic amounts of university-wide missings of point.

So they want to mandate computer ownership for 2000's incoming first years, is how I understand the spine of the issue. Because if every student has a computer, they will be computer literate and thus better prepared for using computers in the workplace, is how I understand the reasoning.

And the outcry (more like an out-dull-roar actually) against this idea basically trots out the same arguments: it's an unfair financial burden, there are already plenty of computing facilities on Grounds, this is just a ploy to make U.Va. seem more cutting-edge to USN&WR, owning a computer doesn't mean you'll use it, and none-too-subtly hinting in a har-har high-school kind of way that only code-crunching Quake-playing tooljacks use computers all that much anyway, while the rest of us are actually out having a life, pimple-face! (I love that last one).

So that first argument is the most valid one, the money thing, but it's a huge point-misser: college itself is one big Unfair Financial Burden. It's like the condemned complaining that the guillotine's dirty. Tuition is always on the rise; computers are always getting cheaper (Weird thing is, the requirement is supposed to be attractive, which it kind of is.).

If the university really thinks that they're going to increase computer literacy by making everyone buy a computer, then someone needs to give them a good solid leather smack with the riding crop, because one of the fascinating things about this problem is that as standards change, so does the definition of computer literacy. See, writing a paper, printing it out, writing e-mail, and checking out the Web does not a computer-literate person make. Maybe two years ago, but not anymore. Shit, my parents can do all that, and they don't know Shift from shinola. Being computer-literate these days is no longer about what you can do on a computer, but how you think about doing things on a computer. A vastly-missed point.

And internet literacy is a whole different thing. It's the difference between a sysadmin job and a clerical job, between WWeb development and desktop publishing, between OOP and data entry. High-paying vs. low-paying.

Thing is, there's really nothing more that the university can do to foster computer literacy. That has to begin with the students, before U.Va. gets its little grappling hooks in them. Barring the Money Thing, requiring computers only truly affects the people who didn't want them in the first place, and those aren't the people U.Va. needs to reach. The best thing U.Va. can do for furthering computer use is to teach people how to restart frozen Macs in the labs and then get some more goddamn chairs in Cocke Hall.

Beyond that, the university should realize that they are the U. of Va. and not the M.I. of T., work on cultivating the computer-literate students they already have rather than financially irritating future students who could care less, and, above all, let future students decide their own initiative. It's not a university's role to keep students from limiting themselves. I deeply and indefatigably respect people's rights to not get into computers; that's just less job competition for me. Please allow computer-ignorance to thrive -- that's how most of us tooljacks are going to earn our meal tickets.

(It has, by the way, occurred to me that the prenominate eye/neck pain may be a result of sitting in front of this machine for hours.)

Scotch