Our New Internet Firewall

A new policy has been put into practice this year concerning the schools computer access; an internet firewall has been put into place. The administration has thought it prudent to do so, due to the trouble  last year with viruses and slow processor speed. When asked why, Mr. Leaman said, "Last year the computers ran really slowly, because they had to scan all the websites as we were visiting them... Now the firewall sever scans the websites first, so the regular sever is not working as hard." The new firewall is using what Mr. Leaman says is the standard school package that the supplying company provides, blocking social networks, blogs, shopping websites, websites involving weaponry, and other websites deemed appropriate. "if something is heavy in sales, that type is blocked," said Mr. Leaman.

However, there are some initial problems with the new firewall. According to Mr. Leaman, the new firewall has 100 slots, or licenses, that allow different profiles to access the internet. This would not be  a problem, but according to Mr. Leaman, "Once logged on, its counts as a slot even once the profile is logged off, so what we've found is that we are capping at 100 licenses too easily, and people are unable to access the internet at all, even emhs.net," Mr. Leaman said. Another 100 profiles have been ordered, but until then, the problem has to be manually corrected.

Another point is the student opinion. At the beginning of the year, a point was raised that the popular internet encyclopedia, Wikipedia, was blocked by the firewall. Many students use Wikipedia as a research tool, and were angered by the lack of access. The issue was quickly corrected, but had raised doubts in some over the overall usefulness of the firewall. "There's no consideration of the fact that you have different age groups and maturity levels...There's no consideration of the fact that a 12th grader may need to look at questionable content for a paper versus a 6th grader  looking at questionable content" [just because they can], said Student Body President Dustin Crummett. Opposition to the new firewall may shift policy slightly, but for right now, the administration seems dead set on maintaining the current restrictions on internet access.

-Joe Phillips (Photo by Annie Brunk)

Comments

[Dustin Crummett]

Hmm, just sitting here, minding my own business, thinking about the fact that my name has two t's...

[JohnLL]

"Duly noted and recorded."- Editor in Chief

[Dustin Crummett]

Thanks for the correction. x)