The new proposed computer lab would contain a maze of computers with two printers on a pedestal in the middle.
What is the deal will all these printers?
The University of Tulsa boasts a total undergraduate population of 3,343, according to their website, and the four printers in the entire McFarlin computer lounge mean there is about one printer for every 836 students.
We can do better than that! TU needs more of those wonderful moments when one printer has a paper jam and another is out of ink. There is nothing better than walking into the lab with a half hour to spare until a deadline and yet still turning in the assignment late.
To ensure more students have this experience, especially the ones without their own computer lab in Keplinger or Helmerich, good old McDarling should move down to two printers. Imagine the chaos!
I say we take the printers we are getting rid of, scrap them for parts and use the extra cash to fund the building of another TU fountain. Or better yet, just make another TU fountain out of the printers! We could put it in front of McFarlin.
But what if the added printer traffic proves ineffective in deterring TU students in their pursuits of college degrees? Sure, cutting the amount of printers would do some damage. But why stop there?
We should add more broken computers too. While we already have a dozen or so, broken computers are like ENS funding at TU: gratuitous is just not enough.
The final form of the reformed McFarlin computer lab should have 69 computers, 30 of which will be both unable to connect to printers and incapable of booting up in under half an hour. If they do not all fit in TU’s computer lab, any excess computers can always be stationed down in TU Copy, since that helpful organization got abolished anyway.
The new layout would have to reflect this initiative. The 69 computers would be in a random formation, with some on top of others, and a path winding its way through the technological wasteland. The computer lab would look like Dante’s Inferno but more cyberpunk.
At the center of the labyrinth of lost computers should be the two remaining printers, one of which will have a permanent paper jam. They should be on large shrines a few feet above the floor so students will have to climb up to them to print something off.
Now, some critics of this initiative may say that making students’ lives harder is not good enough of a reward to justify the overhaul of the lab. But consider also the waste of resources. The power that all the broken computers in McFarlin consume to sit there 24/7 for years, and all the space they take up also hurts the campus.
Imagine hundreds of students waiting on rooms full of computers, maximizing the traffic on the one working computer to support the 3,343 students at the University of Tulsa. It makes me tear up just thinking about it.
