Internet filters are out of control

New controls stifle student access to information

 

By Laura Mohr and Lindsay Allmon/Staff Writers

 

            Picture this: You’re sitting in the computer lab with your Spanish class, and you have just finished looking up Cinco de Mayo and its festivities. There are still 10 minutes left in class. You don’t have any other homework, so you figure you will reward yourself, and your teacher says she doesn’t care as long as you’re quiet.

 

You go to the web browser and type in the URL of your favorite game site, but instead of games, you see the words “ACCESS DENIED.”

 

            This new screen, provided by LightSpeed Systems, has been popping up the past two weeks. The district has always had an internet security filter, but now it seems to have taken a large dose of steroids. The new buffed up filter blocks not only games, but forums, music and anything it deems entertainment. Some students cannot even access Google anymore.

 

The filter wasn’t amped up just to take away games though. Principal Marc Faulkner said the additional restrictions were implemented was because of bandwidth.

 

“Basically we have 63 lines that connect us to the internet,” Mr. Faulkner said. “Around 1:30 p.m. every day, all of our bandwidth was full. When we made just games unavailable, we never maxed out our bandwidth, so that’s why we started looking into more filters.”

 

            Needless to say, many students were upset by this. Sophomore Alex Reed and senior Ashley Delaune even started a petition to get rid of the suffocating filter. Unfortunately, “even if George Bush signed it, it wouldn’t help,” according to Principal Marc Faulkner.

 

            “We have only a set amount of bandwidth and a great deal of it was being used and slowing down our services, and games and video eat up a great chunk of it,” Mrs. Shirley Batson, computer lab aide, said. “The blocking came in the best interest of education, but, I think some of the games are educational, like text twist, bookworm and typer-shark. There are also chemistry and physics games, all of which can be considered educational.”

 

            Instead of spending money on such a beefed up filter, maybe the school should invest in more bandwidth. If the issue is money, maybe administrators should just loosen their death-grip on the filter and block only games, and not music, forums and anything at all entertaining.