(November 1, 2005) — The other night I found myself in a pathetic situation: I was on my knees in the living room, desperately begging my dad to let me illegally install our copy of Roxio burning software onto one of the computers at school. Naturally, he adamantly refused, stating that he didn’t want to risk being thrown in jail for defying the law and distributing free copies of software to random computers. I whined and whined about the imperative nature of having this done, but the man wouldn’t budge. To understand why this took place, let’s take a look at our school. Opened in 1997, Clark has prided itself on what has given it the name “magnet high school”: its specialization in technology. When one hears this, they assume the school is chock full of the latest gadgets, waiting to be used by eager, forward-thinking students. I’m here to tell you that although it may have started out that way, things have changed. The reasoning behind my determined pleas to my father was that I needed to burn a crucial assignment saved to the school server onto a CD-R; the only problem was that there was no burning software on the computer I was using. My other option was to save to a flash drive, but the only computer in the room that had such capabilities hadn’t been functioning for going on three days. I was left to prepare for a life of crime, with a side order of stress suited for a 40 year old. The way it breaks down is that if were going to call ourselves a “school of the future,” we ought to keep up to par on everything technological. There are days where I’ll need to print a simple text file out of a cute little Pentium II computer, and lo and behold, something will decide to malfunction and all my work gets lost. Many students are aware of the growing sense of gingerness when it comes to relying on school computers, and it ultimately defeats the purpose of specializing in technology. Now don’t get me wrong; I don’t want to seem ungrateful. There is a sad history of students stealing expensive equipment, thus discouraging administrators from offering such privileges. Another issue is that of budget limitations. But if I recall correctly, $600 of surplus money from the class of 2003 was spent on an absolutely useless plaster astronaut in June of 2004. The irony of such a purchase is maddening. In the end, it makes more sense to pick one or the other; either we are a technology magnet school 100 percent or we go back to the good old paper and pencil.