With the myriad of programs sponsored by Student Government, from Carolina Cab to the Gamecock Pantry, it’s obvious that they need a pretty sizable budget to function. However, you wouldn’t guess that $20,000 of that sizable budget goes to office operations.
In a recent email, Vice President Donnie Iorio expressed a desire to make a change to digital, which would cut back on all that wasteful paper. This is great. He went on to say that the use of Chromebooks would be a great solution to this problem.
That’s where we get off the bus.
Switching to digital is a great way to go, and SG has already taken steps in that direction by using Google Docs to track legislation and forms. However, buying new hardware for 50 senators is not going to end up being a money saver, especially with the yearly and occassional turnover in Senate.
The majority of students at USC have laptops of their own anyway, and even if it is old and missing an “H” key, anyone with internet access can get onto Google Docs. Google Docs can even be accessed by a smartphone.
On the off chance that a member of SG does not have their own laptop available, one of the most popular programs SG has created is the iPad Checkout program that allows students to check out an iPad 2 for three days at a time. If the members of Senate did not have usable technology for the meetings, they could easily utilize the resources they themselves allocated in the Thomas Cooper Library.
SG may be moving in the right direction with this switch to digital, but should avoid anymore large internal expenses when there are free alternatives to explore.