Senate Speaker addresses laptops
In response to the recent letters questioning the need or benefits of the proposed mobile commuting initiative, I would first like to agree that both writers raise great points and concerns.
Your concerns were my concerns when I first started talking about the possibility of such an initiative. Your concerns were also the concerns that the other sponsors of the resolution and the President had.
After two years of research, including fact-finding trip to the University of North Carolina, we have found that our concerns could be addressed if we initiated the plan correctly.
We realized that you could not look at a present day class and ask yourself what a laptop would do to enhance it because the implementation of this plan would call for a dramatic change in the class and in the way it is taught.
We found, as we thought we would, that this plan actually allowed students who could normally not afford a computer the ability to have one, through the use of grants and low-interest loans.
It in essence levels the playing field for students regardless of wealth. We feel that this would undeniably raise the value of an LSU diploma, allowing LSU graduates an advantage in the job market, and would be a major factor in attracting quality corporations to expand or relocate to Louisiana.
I know that students have many more questions about this plan, which would make LSU the leading university in the US in terms of technological advancement, and we want to answer them.
We want this to be a student led initiative and want overwhelming student input and support.
I invite you to come to the Senate Meeting this Wednesday at 6:30 in the Union Atchafalaya room to ask questions, and voice your concerns. I also invite you to e-mail us at [email protected] or call us at 225-578-7176.
Michael Busada
Speaker
Student Senate
Columnist’s lack of respect appaling
Your diatribe on “Lincoln: the Father of Imperial America” takes the cake for inane ramblings. Somehow I missed the decline of Abraham Lincoln’s “popularity.” Really, given your standard rantings, I’m surprised at your defense of the Confederacy and sad lament for the “Old South” and “high culture in Virginia.”
Good old high-cultured boys from the plantations just defending states rights. Let slavery (just a footnote to that noble cause) die a natural death, say in 1890 or so?
I’m sure we would all be better off if the South had been allowed to secede. Later, when Texas and Louisiana decided they could no longer tolerate confederation with the likes of the eastern seaboard states, they would just peacefully make their own little country, and so on.
Maybe we could form the NAU (North American Union) someday.
But what do you expect when Lincoln, a “thoroughly dishonest person” was in charge? What a wonderful future could have been in store, if it hadn’t been for that “tragic figure… who served, regrettably, the side in the wrong.”
Like all Americans, you have a right to your opinions, as much as I disagree with most of them. However, I find your utter lack of respect for the office of the United States presidency, as well as your twisted view of history, appalling.
Do you think your gratuitous insults, referring to the current president of the United States as the “staggering imbecile who currently swaggers through the Oval Office” earn you clever boy points?
Your pervasive cynicism, disrespect for your country (the United, not the Confederate ,States), and evident pride in tossing personal insults at the president are not helpful.
Gregory W. Johnson
Assistant Director
Antiterrorism Assistance Program
Laptops will not futher education
Here’s a scenerio: 150 or so students sit in a classroom for their first day of a generic 1000 level class. Most of the students are freshman who have laptops.
How were they paid for? In 2004 we don’t know yet, but we can guess that it involves some fee, maybe it’s called the “Mobile Computing and Technological Advancement” fee. If you look at your purple fee bill it’s right under the “we put it in you because we can” fee.
What about the non-freshman students in the class? Do they just have to suck it up and buy a laptop? Do they have to pay the extra fee too?
Supposedly, the students with laptops are able to have a more interactive learning environment. But, if we watch them during the course of class we see that some are typing diligently and taking good notes (something they did before with notebooks), some are browsing the internet and playing games, some are having instant message conversations with friends, and a few are out of luck because their computer just performed an illegal operation, again.
The people who took good notes and paid attention in class before they had laptops will always do that. The people who goofed off in class before will just have more entertaining ways to do so. The bottom line is that laptops won’t improve the quality of classes. They’re merely an expensive, unreliable gimmick.
Matthew Bello
Freshman
Mass Communication