"The Great Campus Goof-Off Machine"

The essay "The Great Campus Goof-Off Machine", published in the New York
Times in 1999, was written by Nate Stulman. Stulman was a college student who wrote this essay resulting from a concern he had about what he was observing on campus. His primary concern, which was emphasizes repeatedly in his essay, is the growing trend of requiring students to own a personal computer.
The essay starts off with describing how several colleges and universities
are requiring students to have computers. These machines are touted as tools that will help the student, not only through word processing, but also by allowing access to the Internet for unlimited research. With this in mind a lot of institutions are requiring students to pay an extra fee to have Internet access in their dorm rooms and more accesses to computers on campus.
Stulman describes the use of computers on an average college. First, he leads us down a residence hall where a student is seen in front of a computer; h...