Although I am as guilty as any student of occasional in-class Web surfing — and although I was once an advocate for a completely wireless campus — I have experienced an about-face this semester, my last at Yale. The right choice is clear, and we all know it deep down: Yale should ban computer use in the classroom.

When utilized during class, the Internet detracts, distracts and brings us further and further from Yale’s original mission. Dean Miller, like the professors referenced in Wednesday’s story (“Doing away with in-class Web surfing,” Jan. 28), should act now, even in the face of inevitable student dissent. When we begin to pay off our student loans, we all will thank her; no sane Yalie, after all, means to delve out $40,000 a year — that’s roughly $4,444 per credit and between $185 and $370 per class — to update his Facebook status.

That is, unless he plans to change it to, “Wasting (a lot of) money. Sorry, Mom and Dad!”

Andrew Mangino
Jan. 28
The writer is a senior in Branford College and a former editor in chief of the News.