Some Housy students have become frustrated with an online content blocking program installed on school-provided laptops that they say interferes with legitimate educational research.
Most students are familiar with “looks like this page isn’t allowed” when the content block is triggered. The system aims to block inappropriate sites, articles and videos using a list of banned keywords with the purpose of prioritizing education and keeping students safe and focused on schoolwork. Some say the policy is too broad and interferes with education, but Housy’s head of IT, Mike Ellington, said it is more permissive than policies at other schools.
“We have a much more liberal internet policy for students than most schools do,” Ellington said. “We don’t block anything from the students that we don’t also block from the faculty.”
HVRHS uses the Securly SafeSearch program, with a customizable policy that allows Ellington to select which categories to block at the direction of the school administration, which provides guidelines. The software then scans sites and searches for keywords within those selected categories, and blocks any searches or sites that contain them.
Online content blocking in schools is mandated by the federal Child Internet Protection Act. The law was enacted in 2000, requiring schools to take measures that will prevent students from seeing photos that are “obscene, child pornography, harmful to minors,” and also monitor online activities for bullying, according to information on the Federal Communication Commission’s website.
“We’re what’s left to make sure that you’re growing in the proper directions,” Ellington said. “We are ultimately responsible for that kind of protection.”
Students say the blocks are too broad. Blocking things like gambling sites can keep students on task and safe, but some students have been prevented from accessing certain sites while trying to do research for school. Some words trigger the tool, with one student noting the word “dick” prevented him from conducting research.
Finn Malone was researching U.S. Sen. Dick Blumenthal for an ECE American Politics project, only to find that the google search page was blocked after he typed “Does Dick Blumenthal take PAC money?”
“It’s ridiculous because if I want to find inappropriate content, I’ll go on my phone,” Malone said. “Not that I do, but if I did, I’ll go on my phone.”
The policy blocks keywords in categories such as pornography, gambling and bullying, aiming to keep students from viewing inappropriate content. But “websites about sexual health or including sexual terms but not containing pornography” are also blocked, according to the Securly HVRHS Student Policy.
Sophia Fitz, a senior at Housy, said she recently hit the block when trying to use her school laptop to read about an alleged gang rape at Cornell because the word “assault” triggered the program. She said she encounters the blocks regularly while trying to research things for her classes.
“You’re supposed to have access to these things,” Fitz said. “I think it’s harmful just blocking a word, like the fact that assault, that’s just a word that can be automatically blocked.
“It’s clearly getting in the way of people’s education,” Fitz continued.
Jeffery Tripp, P.E. and Health teacher, said some of his curriculum actually relies on finding bad information on the internet so he can teach students to differentiate it from good information.
“They can unblock specific sites. But the problem is, I wanted students to research, so they needed access to even bad information,” Tripp said. “Like, that was part of the task, to research what comes up early on in Google searches, what is good information, what is not.”
Health classes research content such as drugs and sexual health, which can often lead to Google searches being blocked in their entirety. Tripp said despite the initial hiccups, the school’s IT department has been responsive in unblocking content at a teacher’s request.
“I’ve always gone to IT and we’ve been able to work it out,” Tripp said. “So, I found them very helpful.” Tripp continued.
Tripp advised that students should talk to faculty when they need something unblocked for academic purposes. “Conversations can be had to make sure that our academics and our curriculum is able to be performed at the highest level,” he said.
