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Old Chromebooks are affecting juniors’ daily academics and they’re not happy
By: Danica D’oria & Maiah Dunham
Junior Lydia McMichael thinks she and her fellow juniors deserve better. When all students were provided with their individual laptops this year, freshmen and sophomores received brand-new touchscreen Chromebooks. Seniors were granted another year of Macbooks.
Juniors, on the other hand, were greeted by old and fairly worn computers recycled Chromebooks from past years.
“I feel like [juniors] deserve better,” McMichael said, adding she believed it was dumb for freshmen and sophomores to get new devices over juniors. “When I got my computer at the beginning of the year, there was a sticky substance on the case, and I had to clean it off myself.”
Nowadays, technology is a pivotal tool when it comes to academics. A lot of what students do at school can’t be feasibly done without technology.
At Dexter, students are granted the privilege of a school-issued computer; however, It was definitely an irksome surprise for most juniors when they were given old Chromebooks instead of Macbooks. Many other students at Dexter have compelling opinions on the matter.
Junior Cam Arbour says that his computer is “laggy and takes forever to load.” He also stated that Canvas, the platform that is crucial for all our schoolwork, tends to “lag and freeze up when [I try] to use it.” Many other juniors we interviewed seem to have this same exact problem.
Another junior, Hannah Kangas, touches on the importance that computers have regarding standardized testing:
She feels that “[juniors] deserve better computers” because of “the important testing this year.” Kangas also talks on her productivity level of her chromebook, “The minute you have more than three tabs open, you better pray because once your computer is slow it will stay slow,” she said. On top of general issues, there is another crowd of juniors who have physical issues with their computers.
Junior Jade Batiyeva-Lepler says that her computer “is definitely used” and that “there is crayon-colored on it and some chips and dents.”
“It’s a little embarrassing pulling out [my] old, dirty Chromebook while everybody else has newer ones,” she said.
“[I was] excited about being the upperclassmen with the Macbooks since freshman year.”
Other students at Dexter also expressed their opinion on whether it was fair for the juniors to receive old Chromebooks. Freshman Wyatt Richards said, “I guess it’s not fair, you know seniority, but I guess that’s just how the cookie crumbles.”
Juniors have a wide range of opinions on this computer dilemma, but what they don’t know is why they were put in this position.
Unfortunately, after several attempts to gather information from the DHS technology department via email and phone calls, we did not receive a comment on this matter.
Juniors are greatly disappointed at the fact that they were given old computers. Many think it would only be fair if the lower grades got the used ones and upperclassmen got the newer ones while some are unbothered.
This situation has left juniors feeling slighted and aggravated.
