Firewall software spells trouble for students at RHS
Posted on Saturday, March 15, 2008
ROGERS — The in-school suspension room at Rogers High School may be full from now until May after students passed around a software program that allowed them to circumvent the school’s firewall. Principal Bill Stringer had not finished interviewing students when he was contacted Friday, but he knew at least 60 students had possession of the software.
Those students will be punished according to school policy, Stringer said. Each will lose Internet privileges for two weeks and serve three days of ISS. Because of the large number of students, their days in ISS will be scheduled into the next month.
Rogers High School students are well aware of the school’s Internet-use policy, Stringer said. Not only are they asked to sign a paper indicating they’re aware of the policy, he went over it at orientation meetings, he said.
“ It’s not a technology issue; it’s a discipline issue, ” he said. “ We need to do what we need to do to make sure people do what they’re supposed to do. ”
He planned to interview a total of 200 students Friday.
Technology Director Gary Day explained that which sites the students visited is not an issue. Using and saving the software is.
School firewalls are in place for two reasons, Day said.
Firewalls keep students away from sites that are inappropriate but also protect the system’s bandwidth.
“ There are music sites that might be perfectly OK for students to watch — completely inoffensive, ” he said, but they are still blocked because they use a large amount of bandwidth. “ That’s not why we’re here. We’re here for education, ” Day said.
Using bandwidth for entertainment may not cripple the system, but it will slow it down, he said. Even programs like Google Earth that have educational value, along with entertainment value, will slow down the system.
“ Hopefully, this will help them understand so that when they come to work for you, they won’t lose their jobs. ” Day said, pointing out that most businesses would fire an employee who circumvented their firewalls to visit sites like Facebook. com.
Day knew about the students’ use of the software for two weeks before turning over a list of students’ names to Stringer. Stringer was already investigating the problem when a high-school teacher also reported it.
The software the students shared is not difficult to find and use, Day said.
At the Sophomore Center, Principal Larry Ben said he didn’t know if any of his students had been involved in breaching firewalls. He conceded that it would be easy for that kind of information to travel from students at the junior / senior campus to students in his building, but he was counting on the technology department to let him know if there was a problem.
Students are not counted absent when they attend ISS, and they do not miss any schoolwork, so the punishment will not affect their grades, Stringer said. Losing Internet privileges at school shouldn’t affect their grades either, he said, since students can access the Internet from home or from the public library. Teachers will work with the students to make sure they can complete their assignments, he said.
Stringer said he has heard rumors that the disciplined students will not be allowed to attend prom or to be exempt from final exams, but those rumors are not true. Time in ISS does not affect either prom attendance or exam exemption, he said.
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