Tina Pan, the founder of the Dungeons & Dragons Club here at Harwood, needed to check the saving throw rules. She went to the wiki site, and unfortunately for her, it was blocked. She felt annoyed. Maybe you’ve also had this experience.

When surfing the internet at Harwood, you may have encountered sites that probably should not be blocked but are anyway.  Additionally, there are sites that probably should be blocked but aren’t, like Twitter. Blocking and unblocking are the main functions of a firewall.

The firewall at Harwood is run at the district level. This means that the firewall has to cover kindergarteners all the way up to the staffers which is a large age group. What’s appropriate for a kindergartener may not be appropriate for a senior. 

So how does this firewall work?

The district has a guiding policy called The G11. The three main ideas of the G11,

Protect the privacy of the students, Prevent illegal activities such as piracy, and block age-inappropriate material such as pornography.

You can look at the document. Here.

Which leads to my main question what is age appropriate for a group of high school students?

As a high school student myself I believe, we have developed enough mental ability to determine what’s appropriate for ourselves. Many of us are better at navigating the internet than our teachers. For the most part we know where we shouldn’t be and where we should be. You do not need to censor us.

There is an obvious solution multiple networks with separate firewalls, which will allow for better control over each age group’s content. This plan may sound more expensive but each school already has the hardware. All we need to do is just change the software. We appreciate the protection but we desire freedom.