Why did the AET Campus get new computers

You may not have heard that the Academy of Entertainment and Technology, also known as AET, has gotten brand new computers. Our question was how did they find the money needed in their budget to fund

brand new computers and what happened to the old computers.
To find the answers to these questions and a few more, we went straight to the source. Stu Seldon, the multimedia computer lab specialist at AET, was the most advantageous source available. Now

the first thing we asked is what happened to the computers? According to Mr. Seldon, the computers get picked up by Academic computing and they strip the computers and distribute them around campus. So is

that it? They just get distributed to different parts of campus? That is not the whole story. Some computers that may have a two gig hard drive get donated to someone. Now who is someone? Unfortunately, Mr. Seldon

could not give us specific details about who gets the donated computers. Since Mr. Seldon could not answer this question he introduced us to Brant Looney, system administrator for AET.

Mr. Looney said that computersthat don't get stripped or distributed to other parts of campus get donated to school districts around Los Angeles County. Some computers get donated to Santa Monica, Malibu and Los Angeles unified. When we went back to Mr. Seldon, for more information, he said that we had to specify in our article that the campus computer lab at AET is only available to students that are part of the AET program.

That then brought up the question of the AET campus allowing Santa Monica and/pr AET students purchase the computers in order to have all the programs already accessible?! Mr. Seldon said that is not possible because "We have to wipe the computers clean, because we are paying a licensing fee per computer." Mr. Looney also said, "It's state owned property you can't auction off, it needs to go to proper channels." This means that if you want one of the computers you must go through channels and if that does not work, one must go buy the computer at a designated store.

Now, how does the academy afford all of the extra merchandise? Looney said, "Budget and grants. Sony has donated monitors and peripherals, like monitors and cameras." Wondering what the AET students, currently

using the computers, was our next idea. In an instantantaneous interview, June Prasertsoi said, "The new computers are faster then the old ones and more helpful for the third dimension animation program".

Another student, Yukio Okuno said "I love working at the computer lab. I can make my project with brand new computers comfortably, and the technicians teach me and give me technical advice".

We also spoke to two students that gave us the 411 on why the campus needs new and powerful computers. Tom Mobley, a graphic designer, and March Kahn, an interactive media student at AET, both agreed that the AET campus needs computers that can support the curriculum that is being taught. Programs being used for things like Animation and Game design. (Check issue one of the Corsairs online or in print for more information related to the AET game design program, e.g. Flash Hudini, maya and 3d studio max.)

Mr. Mobley said, "Students find that AET has programs that are not taught anywhere else except at UCLA extension. But it was $1000 dollars a semester and did not include lab time." So looking at all this information you can see why the AET campus needs high-powered computers, and like Mr. Mobley and Mr. Kahn said, "AET needs high powered computers to run the programs used on this campus."