It’s like being stabbed. Having your hands chopped off. Dying of radioactivity poisoning.

Imagine you’re a Patriot Press staff member, and you just wrote an excellent article about why school shouldn’t start so early. Excitedly, you open up the Press website and navigate to your article, titled “Cock-a-doodle-don’t: why school shouldn’t start at the crack of dawn”. But instead, you get a big yellow triangle with an exclamation point. The web filter has foiled you again. Why? Because of the word “cock.”

That same day, an inquisitive music student might not be able to look up a “French horn fingering chart” in band because of the word “fingering.” The filter does not discriminate between truly inappropriate searches and academic curiosity. It doesn’t matter whether you’re simply doing research about the beliefs of the Westboro Baptist Church – you still can’t visit their website, and how dare the school accuse you of hate crime!

What’s supposed to be a tool to keep students focused in school is really just hindering us. You’re supposed to be teaching us to be adults – here, we’re being treated like preschoolers requesting our parents’ permission to visit the Disney website. Allow students to take some responsibility in their online actions. After all, we know you’re watching anyway.