Editor’s note: This Letter to the Editor was contributed by students out of COMM:110

Do you still have that embarrassing profile picture? Trying to look up an article for an
assignment and it’s blocked? What about using your personal email for colleges and can’t? That’s
because there are a lot of technology restrictions in place that not many people understand.
The technology restrictions we have in place today are too restrictive.While some can see this as
creating a most beneficial learning environment, many see it as unnecessary. Highschool isn’t
just about learning the content of our classes, but also how to be in the world. Nowadays a lot of
the academic, social and occupational world is on technology no matter how much we like or
dislike it. These restrictions are too strict and need to be loosened to help us succeed.

These issues are important to our student body because the majority of us want to be
trusted as adults as some of us are. We would like to have the resources to succeed as students.
Whereas right now we don’t. Another reason that our technology is too restrictive comes to the
point when teachers have to ask for different learning sources to be unblocked, which could take
days, and may force them to change their teaching plans.

We’re not asking to allow us to do whatever it is we want. We just want simple solutions.
Our profile picture, we want the ability to change it to the default which is our first letter of our
name. Websites that are blocked should be only for students who abuse that privilege and not for
the kids who are using their computers responsibly. Then we want the option to use our personal
email along with our school email because the restrictions interfere with college situations or
ACT and AP Classroom information and websites are all through personal emails. We
understand that we can use personal emails through outlook, however, this would require
unnecessary steps. Our solution would also solve the problem of students taking out their phones
to check other emails during the school day because of our Away for the Day Policy.

We understand that we are blocking websites for student safety and because students have
abused this privilege based on past experiences. We personally don’t think this should really
apply to anyone who has not broken any of the teachers or Technology Departments’ trust. The
ability to make irresponsible decisions allows us to learn from our mistakes. We also have GoGaurdian
so if the teachers don’t think we should be on that site they can block it. We don’t find it
necessary to be a high school wide block. Changing this policy will build relationships within the
school and create more opportunities for students outside of school.