Like Robin says, I’d figure most students already HAVE a cellphone. It’s not like it’s brand new technology. And these kids these days (shakes old lady fist) have already adopted it!
This, too. I know of maybe three people who don’t have cell phones. I didn’t get one until just before high school graduation, which was long after most of my peers, and that was in 2004.
Appropriate name.
Sounds like a bad plan at an awful price, and even if it wasn’t, it shouldn’t be compulsory because not that many students would need it. It does have some features that sound good, but it should be an opt-in program at most. I didn’t take a cell phone to college (I graduated 3 years ago), but the landlines were pretty cheap. This sounds like a ripoff.
But there have to be plenty of things the students have no say over. Like tuition and what’s covered under student fees?
I don’t use the cellphone I have now. I sure wouldn’t want to pay for another/new one with a crap plan.
College students are old enough to watch over themselves. What the hell does the college expect them to do when they leave? Have their boss implant a tracking chip in the back of their neck?
Utter bs
Great, now you’ve gone and blown their surprise for Job Fair.
Fuck that. No way in hell that should be mandatory.
They’re kidding right? Oh, of course they’re not. I’m not surprised a university has come up with a new way to rip off students. As if the crappy overpriced dorms and the crappy overpriced food and the crappy overpriced parking and the crappy overpriced books and the crappy overpriced toiletries in the campus stores aren’t enough. Now a crappy overpriced cell phone plan. To tell you the truth, I’m surprised my alma mater isn’t trying to pull this stunt. It’s their style. But it might be over the top, even for them.
It seems to me that it’s more of an effort to be able to track their students, for whatever reason, which is very odd. College students are supposed to be able to function on their own–and as was mentioned, most have cell phones already and know how to dial 911, so this really doesn’t make them much safer. That’s a load. Universities raise prices all the time, so I’m sure they could have come up with some other way to finagle $420 more out of students that wouldn’t be such a scam. It’s such an…odd idea.
I’m glad I graduated a few years ago. I’m not sure what I would have done if that had been mandatory when I was in college. There were downsides to my university, but I liked the education I was getting, so I know I wouldn’t have left if it became mandatory there. I would have participated in a campaign to stop it, that’s for sure. And I would have been pissed.
Imagine a student who is halfway through a degree in a field they like, with professors and peers they like, with university-funded scholarships. What are they supposed to do about this? Uproot themselves and find a new university and funding? Everyone bitches about bad university policies, but they’ve got students by the balls, and they know it.
50 minutes? I get like a 1000 peak for about that price. What a crock of shit. I bet the handset sucks too. I’d tell the dean to take it and shove it right up his ass. Or I’d think about what Bluto would do and then do that.
“Was it over when the Germans made Pearl Harbor overpay for a phone plan that didn’t have enough minutes? NO!”
I think that this situation absolutely requires a really futile and stupid gesture be done on somebody’s part.
My regular cell phone has 500 minutes, all the other (normal) services mentioned, and it costs me less than that per year. This is an absolute ripoff.
Sounds like a they are using the ‘security’ angle as a gimmick to foist another ripoff on the tuition payers. It will, no doubt, work on parents, and provoke uproar in pay-your-way students. I know I would have flipped. I suspect that if a student complains enough they will be allowed to opt out, but the school does not want that to become common knowlege. It’s not much different from the mandatory laptops that were all the rage a few years ago: squeeze a little more money out of those who are entranced by shiny new fads, and to hell with those who can’t pay.
Weird. Especially weird since MSU students commute there, for the most part.
It’s not about the cell phone plan. I’m guessing it’s all about the criticisms (and probable litigation) Virginia Tech and others received when they were unable to notifiy students in a timely manner that there was a crisis on campus. If the college requires every student to have a cell phone and they don’t get the text that there’s a shooter in the library, then the college will hold little or no liability. By requiring these plans, the college controls whether or not the contract remains in place so there’s no risk of the student cancelling their phone.
It’s not just in response to the VT shooting. Lately in NJ, we’ve had a few students die and in at least one case not found for several weeks.
It’s all part of the new generation that is coddled, and the older generations keep on doing it.
Having read the rest of the thread, it occurred to me that there may be some other issues.
The first is, would professors have to allow students to keep their phones on in class, creating a disruptive environment? If the phones had unlimited texting and unlimited data usage, what would keep students from texting each other constantly, or goofing off on the Internet in class or cheating on exams? There is a reason why professors don’t like electronic devices in the classroom. And I can see some students getting upset with that kind of obnoxious behavior. And if professors are allowed to make students turn off the phones, wouldn’t that defeat the purpose of having these phones?
The second is, it seems like an effort to make a campus notification system easier to implement at the (literal) expense of students. If you essentially issue phones, you can take that block of phone numbers and dump them into a notification system; getting and entering individuals’ private cell numbers is too much like actual work.
What happens to the phones over breaks? Who pays for them then? Are students paying for a useless service?
I thought this, in particular, was priceless:
How so? If you’re talking about not having to buy a laptop, that’s comparing apples and oranges. If you’re talking about dropping a better plan for this one, there’s no savings. For that matter, $420 a year ought to be able to buy students a Blackberry with the same features as the phone. Or is he talking about the university avoiding a lot of costs? Because if that’s the case, some transparency is in order.
Finally, there is the privacy issue. Who can activate the GPS besides students? What assurances can the school make to students and parents that that information can’t be shared or abused?
ISTM that the university is forcing yet another fee on students for something they don’t need. If I were student government, I’d be asking a lot of questions.
Robin
I think this paragraph, from the article i linked above, is rather revealing:
“Collapse of a market”? Sounds like the school is looking to make some money on this.
Why would they need to take phones out of the dorms? Presumably the dorms already have landlines, so leaving the phones in there for students who don’t have cellphones is easy enough. And students who have their own cellphones could use them or the landlines to “communicate in an emergency.” Her reasoning here makes no sense to me.
I went back and re-read your link. I agree with the writer.
Landline phones break down and have to be replaced at the university’s expense. The service is also bundled in to the room and board fee.
This way, the university gets to extort money from students who don’t live on campus, as well as a new revenue source from students who do.
I wonder if the university will reverse its policy, and if it does, will it offer refunds to the students who had to pay for that ridiculous service?
Robin
If this was a satellite phone, especially in an area that had spotty cell coverage, then maybe. The price wouldn’t be incredibly bad, and students who already have cells could still see some benefit.
But a regular cell phone? For $420? There’s enough complaints at my school about $100 a year for a bus pass being mandatory, and that’s something a lot of students don’t have already.