The administration has mandated that students register their smart phones, tablets, and laptops with the Information Technology department, the organization charged with regulating internet use at the school. Although the regulation of students’ use of technology was inevitable, the school is ill prepared for this move. The lack of warning, the limitations on administration’s power and the sheer multitude of devices owned will cause this measure to fail.
Because the administration failed to provide students and their parents adequate warning of the registration, a large percentage of students missed principal Jay Pearson’s announcements. As a result, the act itself was subject to student speculation and compared to the Congressional SOPA and PIPA acts by student Facebook group Formation of Students Registration Reform. If the administration announced this decision earlier they could have addressed students’ concerns prior the registration process itself.
The ambiguity of the registration could have been alleviated through a stronger promotion of the registration. Distributing flyers explaining the policy, its cause and a form to register would have improved the transparency of the act itself. The lack of distribution of the form required for registration justifies not registering devices.
Additionally, the administration has disclosed neither how this process works for transfer students, incoming freshmen and acquisition of new devices nor how they will prevent unregistered devices from accessing the internet in the school. This lack of transparency crates loopholes that will create problems of right to internet access in the near future.
More importantly, the administration did not consider the multitude of devices owned by students. According to a national survey conducted by the Kaiser Family Foundation, 29 percent of teenagers own laptops, 75 percent own cell phones and 22 percent own tablets. For Marshall, that equates to over two thousand devices whose internet usage the IT department has to register. These numbers are not necessarly true for the Marshall population, so the school should have posted a survey prior to this act.
The lack of transparency of this registration coupled with the multitude of devices owned by students will bring the registration of devices to a standstill.
Prolonging this initiative is the only sure way to register internet users at Marshall. Using this time to properly inform the student body will also ease the transition. From a solid foundation of understanding, the administration will be more successful in registering student devices and moving forward efficiently.