*#$%ing SHS Censorship

Written by Eric Thurm

Turn on a computer in SHS and open a web browser. Go to the Scarsdale Schools homepage, open the District Information menu and click Scarsdale Cable TV. As of September 3, SHS was blocking the SPS-TV schedule, valiantly shielding unsuspecting students from the wiles of Scarsdale Educational Access Television. Go to the Scarsdale Public Library Events page, and try to get to access the events calendar. Every month other than September is blocked by the school censorship program for "Adult content". While Maroon wants to protect SHS students from the nastier denizens of the internet just as much as the administration, the blocking of library events and even the district’s own TV schedule are simply two examples of SHS’s unreasonable internet censorship.

The Internet Movie Script Database, (IMSDB) an academic resource for students writing English papers on film, for example, was blocked last year for profanity. DailyKos, a high-profile political blog, was at one time blocked, also for profanity. Articles on other blogs and news aggregation sites like The Week are currently blocked for drug content. And on the school wireless network, all .edu sites for schools are blocked, including one of the Internet Safety links on the Scarsdale Schools website. All of these are academic resources that ought to be open for student use.

In addition to academic resources, censorship is simply unnecessary for many other websites. Social networking sites like Facebook are sometimes useful for contacting friends, doing work, or finding information that could be helpful in an academic context. Some game sites, like Sporcle, can broaden a student’s knowledge base--the geography quizzes on Sporcle are even recommended by some teachers.

Besides, the point of free time in school is for it to be free. If students choose to spend their free time on things that aren’t work, they should be able to make that decision. They also have many other ways of wasting time that aren’t online. The harms of stopping students from accessing certain sites simply aren’t justified by the likely minimal impact on students.

While it might be argued that students should be using school computers only for work purposes, the fact remains that the censorship of certain sites is ineffective. There are hundreds of sites students could use to kill time without working that aren’t blocked, and more are created every daythan the administration can hope to stop. Though trying to get students to do more work is a fine goal, unnecessarily blocking academic sites and trying in vain to prevent slacking off without appealing to student motivation, the heart of any problem, is simply not going to work.