Friday, May 1, 1998

Mac Fans at Chapel Hill Criticize Plan That Would Require Students to Own P.C.'s By JEFFREY R. YOUNG A small group of Macintosh fans at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is criticizing a plan that will require students to own P.C.'s beginning in 2000. The critics say that adopting the P.C. as the standard type of computer will limit student choice. Administrators, however, say that such standardization will save both students and the university money by allowing the university to negotiate with a computer maker to provide one kind of computer, in bulk, for students to purchase. A P.C. standard will also cut down on support costs, administrators say, because university technicians will not have to be familiar with as many types of computers. And because so much software is now available for P.C.'s, officials say, students would still benefit from plenty of computing diversity. The university has not yet decided which brand of P.C. will be the standard. Similar debates are playing out on other campuses where computer requirements are under discussion. "The diversity issue is a total red herring," said Marian Moore, chief information officer at Chapel Hill. "I believe that what I am hearing is misinformed people who don't understand technology. True diversity is not the device. True diversity is the software you can run on it." And, she noted, almost 90 per cent of students who own computers own P.C.'s anyway. Fans of Apple's Macintosh computer see things differently. "Even if it is a small number bringing Apples, I think we have to have some choice in the matter," said Drew Gilmore, an official at the university's Morehead Planetarium. He said that in some fields, such as graphic design, Macintoshes are popular, and students who are not exposed to Macs "aren't going to be adequately prepared to go out into the real world" and succeed. Mr. Gilmore, along with two other staff members on the campus, started a group to oppose the plan soon after administrators announced it, in February. Members of the group, People for Computational Freedom, are circulating a petition that calls on the administration to delay contract negotiations with computer sellers until their concerns are satisfied. They have also met with university administrators. Other universities have required their students to own specific computer models. One prominent example is Wake Forest University, which is just down the road from Chapel Hill, in Winston-Salem, N.C. But some other universities that have required students to own computers, such as the University of Florida, have left it up to the students to decide what brand and model to buy. "We have faculty who are saying, 'I want to be able to use this technology in my classroom,'" said Ms. Moore, but who hesitate to do so because students do not all have access to computers. "We're extremely excited here," she added. "We feel it will have an absolutely wonderful effect on research." Meanwhile, Mr. Gilmore said his fears about the decline of Macintoshes on the campus were already coming to pass. The administration recently decided to reduce the number of Macs in campus computing labs from about 150 to 35 when the labs are upgraded this summer. John L. Oberlin, the university's executive director for academic technology and networks, said the decision had been made because "we have Macs that sit empty today, when we have lines of students waiting for P.C.'s." Background stories from The Chronicle: "At U. of Florida, 'Ramping Up' to Support 42,000 Student Computers on a Single Campus," 3/20/98 "Invasion of the Laptops: More Colleges Adopt Mandatory Computing Programs," 12/5/97 "Money and Macs at Yale: Grant From Intel Reopens a Bitter Debate," 10/24/97 "Yale Official Urges Freshmen to Minimize Use of Macintoshes," 9/12/97