This paper is drawn from an empirical, ethnographic study of information and communications technologies (ICT) use among thirteen, low-income twelfth-graders attending a large urban high school and focuses on participants' ICT access in the school library. It examines how library staff members' cultural and gendered perceptions shaped ICT restrictions in ways that disproportionately impacted students of color, boys, and boys of color and how institutional factors helped to create conditions under which subjectivities served as guideposts for managing scarce resources. I argue that some restrictions were unfounded, unnecessarily impeded these students' ICT use and access and created avoidable tensions between students and library staff.