The digital divide is real for these college students
It’s 11 p.m. on a Thursday night and PCC and music student Gerry Reoyo knocks on his neighbor’s door. Reoyo waits a minute for his neighbor to open the door, hoping that he’ll let him borrow his internet again to turn in this assignment. The neighbor opens his door, seeing Reoyo frantically try again to reconnect on his phone before knowing what he’s going to ask.
“Hey sorry again, can I borrow your internet again for like five minutes?” Reoyo said. “I was trying to upload this file for class but my hotspot ran out of data.”
This is the new normal for students like Reoyo who have no access to the internet at home as schools transition to online formats due to COVID-19.
One-in-three households with children ages six to 17 making below $30,000 annually do not have internet access.
According to a Pew Research analysis of 2015 American Community Survey Data, 15% of U.S. households with school-age children do not have access to high-speed internet and the majority of those households are low income. The same survey reported that one-in-three households with children ages six to 17 making below $30,000 annually do not have internet access, compared with just 6% of similar households earning $75,000 or more annually.
This gap is something all schools across the country have been trying to close in order to produce successful students. And with public places such as libraries and internet cafes being closed, students without the internet are left in the dark to fail or are forced to play catch up whenever they do get access.
Reoyo, a music major at PCC, regularly used as many school labs and resources as he could so he wouldn’t have to do his coursework at home.
“When [PCC] said that school would be all online, I was like ‘shit what am I going to do?’” Reoyo said. “I have no internet at home and my [cellular] data hotspot would probably run out in a week”
And it did run out in a week. After that, Reoyo was so frustrated that he called Spectrum to pay for an internet plan but was relieved when Spectrum was offering a plan for students that provided them with free basic internet access for 60 days.
But that’s just a band-aid fix and not a real permanent solution to those who do not have a reliable internet connection. Students like Reoyo are ill-prepared for subsequent semesters once the 60-day period expires.
Across the county, an average of 18% of households lack internet access and 10% lack home computers.
Most students living in L.A. County have access to the infrastructure necessary to obtain technological resources. However, there are still neighborhoods where as many as 30% of households do not have an internet connection. Across the county, an average of 18% of households lack internet access and 10% lack home computers.
But other students on the opposite end of the economic spectrum were much better prepared for the impromptu transition.
Graham Sanders, also a music major, relies heavily on his MacBook Pro for his workflow in and out of school as a music producer.
“A lot of industry pros use Logic and MacOS so it was just a clear cut choice in what hardware I had to invest in for school and the future,” said Sanders. “Spending $3,000 on a laptop, plus the $300 for Logic was a lot, but I know it’ll last.”
But Sanders actually had to spend another $3,000 on a MacBook after his car and backpack containing his new laptop were stolen right out of his driveway. His car was eventually found by the police, but his laptop and audio gear were nowhere to be found, as the thieves even turned off the Find My Mac feature.
“…I lost basically $3500 outright…”
“It sucked because I had just bought the damn thing, and they stole it right after the 30 day AppleCare stolen laptop warranty [ended],” said Sanders. “So I lost basically $3500 outright, and my car and other audio gear that was invaluable to my work.”
After braving it through two months with an old Windows desktop, Sanders saved up enough for another MacBook Pro, which at the time happened to be the newly refreshed 16-inch version offering more computational power at the same price as the previous model.
“Even though it sucked that my original [MacBook] got stolen, I at least had the savings to get another one,” said Sanders. “And I know a lot of people can’t say that, whether in the music program or across PCC to just drop almost $7k on two laptops”
While the students with full desktop operating systems such as Windows and MacOS fare the best in this online transition period, others are left out due to hardware or software limitations and have to be creative in working around those barriers.
One example is Justin Gonzales, a UC Berkeley commit for Fall 2020, who used a Google Chromebook for economic and usability reasons but is now regretting his decision with the increase in workload.
“When I first bought it, cheap Windows laptops had so many tradeoffs in terms of price to performance,” said Gonzales. “At the time, I was only using web-based apps like Google Docs to get stuff done, but now the limitations of ChromeOS are obvious in the now online college environment.”
Some of these limitations include true windowed multitasking, the use of x86 based .exe programs such as the now critical Zoom, and having to find workaround extensions for simple tasks like photo or video editing in Chrome. But Gonzales doesn’t mind, as much as it annoys him.
“I know there’s less privileged students out there making the best of their situation with what [devices] they have” Gonzales said. “So me having a solid internet is more than I can ask for, even if this Chromebook annoys the hell out of me at every turn.”
As COVID-19 continues to force school closures for the foreseeable future, districts across the state and country are working to keep students learning at home with equal access and outcomes. But these stories of students at just one community college show that that plan will be very difficult to implement due to the tech disparity across the vast range of consumer hardware, software, and internet accessibility.
