Arizona State University is considering a plan that would require students to bring laptop computers to classes at its campus in downtown Phoenix, starting next fall. But some of those students aren’t pleased with the proposal.
In a board editorial, Arizona State’s online student newspaper opposed the plan, arguing that it would prove too expensive.
"Why would students who will just be writing papers be required to have a laptop when they could just as easily write the paper at home on the computer they already own?" the editors ask.
5 Responses to Another Laptop Plan Faces Student Objections
dank48 - January 9, 2012 at 2:06 pm
Thanks for an entertaining and informative article. Good job of downplaying the resentment; your nominee is exquisite. On the other hand, I think “trump” (n. & v., both deliberately lowercased) has a lot to be said for it. Anyone who’s lived through five minutes of The Donald in any context whatsoever understands both noun and verb just fine.
mjaneb - January 9, 2012 at 6:06 pm
“The winner was a bit too clever, I thought: a Mellencamp is a woman who is now a bit too old to count as a “cougar”; the etymology is from the name of the largely forgotten singer John Cougar Mellencamp.” John Cougar Mellencamp is likely not largely forgotten by those women (like me) who are of the demographic to be considered Mellencamps!
josgirl13 - January 10, 2012 at 11:41 pm
Anyone know why he dropped “Cougar” from his name? Hmm?
josgirl13 - January 10, 2012 at 11:42 pm
Great fun. It occupied my mind quite nicely.
mikegrubb - January 12, 2012 at 4:18 pm
On the whole, I enjoyed the piece and took much enjoyment from the content. That said, I feel I must question the assertion, “It is words, with their unpredictable meanings, that have to be listed in dictionaries.” There are some phrases, I would argue, that are just as unpredictable in meaning as discrete words. Often, an entry for a “word” is an organizational gambit for giving the meaning of both discrete words and phrases. The dictionary entry for “turn,” for example, gives definitions for the word by itself as well as the word in phrases, such as “turn down, turn out, turn up” (etc.). While I grant that the phrases are given in a subordinate position relative to the key word, if a dictionary forwent including them on the basis that the discrete meanings of “turn” and “down” were already given, I’d consider the book next to useless. (I suppose an argument could be made that we should, as in German, consider the particle words as “separable prefixes” and therefore inherently part of the root word, but, to my knowledge, we don’t yet do so in English.) While I’d agree that “keep warm” probably is compositional, if someone were to read something I’d written, for example, and advise that I “put a bird on it,” I’d be flummoxed, and I doubt I’d be able to fathom that it had something to do with “artistic flair” by investigating the discrete words of the phrase. I understand the need to differentiate to try to keep things as manageable as possible, but the bright line between words and phrases may not be so clear as we’d sometimes like.