The Washington Post has an article on universities debating whether to ‘pull the plug’ on landlines (i.e., traditional phones) in their dormitories. Apparently so many students have cell phones that they rarely use the landlines. Historically, universities have used surcharges on the phone calls to finance the landlines (and more, because the article says that the phone service used to be a “cash cow”). Now they’re sinking lots of money into a service that the students seldom use.
To cover students, such as international students, who do not own cellphones the universities are thinking of loaning them cellphones. But wait. It doesn’t stop there.
[Washington, DC’s] American University already feels unplugged. The campus is wireless, so students can type e-mails and study on laptops from couches, the steps of the library and benches outside. Snatches of one-sided conversations drift by as students walk to class talking on their cells. Next fall, the university will provide business school students the latest BlackBerry devices.
Another interesting tidbit from the article is how youth have socially reconstructed the purpose of the phone call. Explains one such student:
“It used to be you’d call someone because you had a reason to call,” said Ian Johnson, 28, a graduate student at American. “Now you call because you’re bored waiting for the bus to come. . . . It’s almost a noise pollution.”
So here we have the connection to the environment. Cellphones are the new noise pollution.
For other environmental reasons, this may not be a good university policy. See Expert spells it out: health fears mean young should not use mobile phones.
