Everytime we do PB (Participatory Budgeting) in Student Government, one item remains constant: Laptop Chargers. Most of the time they win. But at some point you have to ask, where do they all go? Or how many would we need to have enough? Or even should we have any at all? Is there a better way? There must be. In this column I plan to look at the charging of devices in the Upper School and how to make the process more efficient in both simple and more conceptual ways.

The simplest option would be to charge your devices at home, but for the rest of this column we will assume that enough people don’t have the foresight to do this that this has become a large enough of an issue.

The second simplest option to solve this problem already exists. We have chargers in the Library that are available for student use. The major problem is that most of the time you need your laptop, you need to be somewhere that is, in fact, not the Library. The Library has smartly taken the initiative to anchor their chargers to avoid the issue that the rest of the Upper School is currently facing. 

Building off this my first idea would be to model this system around the Upper School. We could purchase enough USB-C chargers that there would be enough to assign 1-2 per classroom. Optionally, we would assign more chargers to classes that tend to use technology more often. Then we would plug the chargers in around the classrooms where they would live permanently. Students could choose to sit by a charger and charge their device during class. However, this proposal comes with a couple issues. First we would need a significant number  of chargers, which aren’t always cheap, But we could probably get a deal by buying in bulk. The second issue is more fundamental, you still can’t move the chargers, so it’s not the most convenient when you have a break or change classes.

This leads me back to what I think is what we currently have. Mr. Bruno theoretically has chargers that we’ve bought with PB in the past, that students can come take when they need a charger. Now the issue with that system and why I assume we have to keep buying more chargers is that people don’t return them. To fix this we could have a more established sign in/out system, that keeps track of however many chargers we want to have and makes sure they are returned. The system could even be digital and have timers and reminders that would help keep track of the chargers. Additionally, we could add AirTags to the chargers if we wanted the ability to find them when needed.

I’ve spelled out a couple of feasible solutions, now I want to talk about the future. Years ago I remember hearing about wireless charging. At the time, no one could charge their phone without plugging it in. But even then, they were talking about a concept much bigger than what we have today. They were discussing the potential of whole room wireless charging, where all the devices in a room can be charged by just being in a room. While we aren’t there quite yet, several companies are getting pretty close, and this would be the best way to ensure everyone’s devices would stay charged and ready to be used throughout the day.

But until then, the other solutions I suggested would go a long way in ensuring that we don’t need to take another vote on Laptop Chargers.