Starting in Fall 2011 an additional fee of $120 will be added to our already hiked tuition in order to broaden the student’s academic experience and further feed into our ever-growing dependence on technology.

In short, the new-coming freshman will be required to purchase an iPad, which will automatically be included in their tuition, and then be able to purchase their books through the apple store.

This idea usually wouldn’t affect me because I’m not a freshman, but the fact that every student that attends East Bay will have to help fund this is ridiculous.

Tuition has already more than doubled since I began my higher education back in 2008 and now I’m being forced to pay fees on an iPad that I won’t even be getting. This is an outrage.

I have no problem supporting higher education.  In fact, I encourage it, but I think it’s completely unreasonable to expect me to pay quarterly fees for something that I won’t even be receiving the benefits for.

It’s difficult enough as it is to not qualify for financial-aid and be dependent on a working mother to help pay my way through school and any other extraneous fees makes my situation even worse.

Even for those who do qualify for financial-aid, it’s just as much of a hardship because the money granted to them does not compensate for the additional fees tagged on to our tuition.

Besides the financial hardship that this brings upon students, digitalizing the school is a tad extreme.

Starting with the incoming freshman and eventually spreading school-wide, students will have to purchase iPads, which is supposed to expose us to more options and help the school keep up with the technology of modern ages.

On one hand it’s economically friendly to use less paper and digitize more of the things we do, but if we now have to buy our books through the Apple Store, we will no longer have the option of renting books or even selling them back.

We will be forced to keep books that we may never read or flip through again, which further adds on to the financial strain.

As digital teaching slowly peeks through in our classrooms more and more it will also be a burden on those who are kinesthetic learners.

Personally, when I’m taking notes, I need to be able to see and feel the notes that I’m taking. I don’t want to type them on a screen, which will eventually strain my eyes, and pretend that this method is more helpful that the standard way of taking notes.

The main focus of this new prop clearly couldn’t be advantageous for the students because if that were the case, this prop would be optional.

For those who want to spend the extra money on an iPad and buy e-books to be more digitized, that is their prerogative, but don’t put the financial strain on every student here when the upperclassmen don’t get to reap the benefits of it.

I think this is just another way for our school to make a mass amount of money and it’s very unfortunate that again the students have to suffer.  This is truly unfair.