Ricky Mulvey and Seth Shanley are members of the Buckeye Standup Comedy Club and joke-loving columnists for The Lantern. Mulvey is a fourth-year in finance and Shanley is a second-year in journalism.
Next fall, every incoming freshman will receive an iPad, courtesy of the university. This is a plan worth wholehearted support, and the only crime is that it did not happen sooner.
An iPad is a top college necessity, ranking between Easy-Mac and Uber.
However, this plan needs a few minor and simple fixes. Mainly, upperclassmen deserve a make-up gift.
Imagine if Dad (aka University President Michael Drake) took all of next year’s freshmen bowling, but then said he wasn’t including everyone because it would be too expensive and our ACT scores were lower.
Ohio State should have negotiated iPod Shuffles for upperclassmen, or at least gotten us the skip-the-line passes that Midway is now selling.
The plan is to give the iPads to the next round of freshmen after the renters graduate, but that would be a bit of a dirty gift. Do you know what young freshmen will do with alone time and an iPad!?!
They will play Club Penguin and wipe their grubby fingers on the screens. Gross!
Just let the freshmen keep their large phones/Tinder machines.
However, we cannot deny that the deal is a boon to freshmen. We often find ourselves short on cash and have no current solutions. Future freshmen might have the option to pawn their rented iPads for a quick loan at a reasonable interest rate. Do not sell the iPad, though. We don’t want Bob Gribben to weep for poor cybersecurity choices. He might not currently be here, but he still wants your passwords protected.
The funding for these iPads comes from a big pool of money the university put aside from becoming more efficient. It’s not from tuition, which is tragic, because then this column would have better jokes.
Some people are taking an old-fashioned stance against iPads for the youth. Do we need gifts to entice teens to come to Ohio State? We did not need iPads to recruit quarterbacks like J.T. Barrett, Troy Smith, and Art Schlichter. Plus, we already have the gift of a clock tower.
However, we say without large phones provided by the university, Ohio State freshmen will not be able to SnapChat or Calculator.
iPads are responsible for the shaping of our future and past. We’re not talking about history class here. With an iOs Lab on campus and a super tablet in the hands of every freshman, it’s well within reason that future students could code themselves to 1995 and stop Joseph Kony’s rise to power.
This debate over iPads for freshmen is not about “free this” or “free that.” It’s about stopping Joseph Kony, before he even starts.
