Students want in on Mac lab; librarian defends restrictions

By Mike Grinnell
As students walk the halls, many seem to complain about the library’s new Mac lab. The new, more-than-$2000 computers aren’t the problem, though. The problem is getting to use them.

Some students complain the Mac lab is reserved for classes when no one seems to be using it. When it looks that way, the librarian said it is only because no one has had time to move the sign, or a class is on its way.



“I just need to use the Macs, but she won’t let me,” sophomore Joe Berardi said.

“She” – the librarian, Ms. Kelley DiSanto – has restricted access to the 11 new iMacs mostly to students taking online courses and teachers bringing their classes in. With a vast library to monitor, Ms. Kelley DiSanto says she is just trying to preserve a studious atmosphere for students who need to use the new machines.

But being kept off such exciting new technology has been hard for some students to take.

“We have recently acquired a state-of-the-art Mac lab and this lady thinks she has the right to kick eager students out,” junior Brendan Slowe said.

Part of the problem may have been that for a brief time students had access, and then had it taken away. The school installed the 11 Macs at the beginning of the year, in one of the rooms off the main library. The first two weeks of school, anyone could use them.

“I feel like it’s a tease,” senior Christina Gaudet said. “We got to use it for the first two weeks and out of nowhere it’s unavailable. It’s not fair.”

The library has banks of regular PC computers and a fleet of mini-laptops. But for many students these do not compare to the newer, faster Macs, with their large, high-definition screens.

“I feel like it’s a waste of money if we can’t use them,” senior Priyanka Deb said.

For the librarian, it would be a waste of money if the students who most needed the Macs, such as those taking online courses through Virtual High School, were unable to work because of distractions.

“I want them to have a classroom environment,” she said. With all the students in the library, she said it was hard for her to police the Mac lab. “There are too many places in this library for me to monitor.”

The librarian has also made the lab available to art students, who use special programs on the Macs for design and other projects.

But students said there were plenty of periods of the day when the Mac lab stands empty, yet students still aren’t allowed in. One student who uses the lab for a VHS class said she would not mind other students in there when she was doing her classwork, “as long as they are not super distracting.”

After hearing some of the criticism, the librarian said she was open to changing her policy, if she heard an idea that fit her needs and the students’ needs. One possibility was to allow students in on a case-by-case basis, based on how they’ve behaved in the library previously. “If the student has shown me respect, then they will get to use it,” she said.