cart before the horse

My university is divided up into 5 colleges (all with undergraduate programs), of which two currently require laptops for freshman and two more will next fall. I met with someone who is working on laptop training for faculty and she said what faculty most want to know is: "Why would we want to use laptops?" On a pedagogical level that question certainly wasn't answered and wasn't really asked before the decision was made to require laptops. It is really hard to fill in behind when a decision has been made without having the crucial groups of people buy in before it was made.