Skid Row with Macs

Finals are upon the students of the New School and as a result, finding a computer at any of the labs is becoming more and more difficult. Lang junior Diari Dieye, who is a frequenter of the labs throughout the year, says that at finals “the lab is like Skid Row with Macs.”

The New School website says that the university has “invested more than $30 million in a series of extensive labs and academic technology services”, a fact which Dieye literally laughed out loud at and queried “$30 million? Like dollars or yen?”

An employee at the third floor Arnhold Hall lab informed me that excluding classrooms the New School university has 301 computers and said that he wasn’t sure how many computers there were in total. The website mentions there being 600 networked computers, which presumably includes the number in the classroom. Parsons sophomore Iliana Begetis feels that there “aren’t enough computers for the student body,” and points out “Some labs are being used for classes which limits us.”

Some students, like Luciana Lombardi, a sophomore at Parsons, have decided to forgo the labs after their experiences in previous years. “Last year I experienced the shit storm that is Parsons Finals week in the labs. It’s impossible to find a place to work and when you do you have to keep an eye on your shit cause you never know when someone is gonna try to fuck you up. [Now] I don’t even bother using the labs. I just download the programs I need,” said Lombardi, “It’s much easier and more comfortable to work at home anyway.”

Dieye has developed several tricks for getting a computer during finals, saying “you have to be smart” about when you go and what you do. She tells me she avoids early morning and noon hours because that’s when everyone goes to print something before class starts. Dieye is not afraid to use her friends either “I look for someone I know and sweet talk them until they are done, then I use the computer.”

The University Student Senate has also noticed problems. Senator Corey Mullee states on newschoolsenate.org that he “ran the platform of getting our printer up and running in the basement below the café on 11th Street” and is looking to get “Express printing stations” in the computer labs. Dieye said of Mullee’s addition to the 11th Street building “I want to marry him. Now we don’t have to make a trek and be late for class just to print a paper.”

The extended hours that the lab has during finals (8:30 am-1:30 am Monday through Thursday) doesn’t seem to help either. Dieye says, “I’ve been there during the late hours. It’s disgusting. Hipster kids are sleeping on the floor and at the computers. It’s like being in a crackhouse. I feel like [those hours] are for really ADD kids who are desperate and can’t focus at home.”

"Here's the problem with this school," Dieye says, "It's not that they don't have it, it's that no one can find it. Some people don't even know that we have labs on certain floors. These things are not at your disposal like they should be."