"Legally Blonde" plays for serious laughs
"Legally Blonde" plays for serious laughs
The big winter musical was a huge success, selling out its second weekend. It was the biggest theater production since COVID, with 108 students working on the play.
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Elle Woods (Bella Pahomsky) cross examines Nikos the poolboy (Braxton Warren) to discover if he’s European or gay, in order to establish an alibi for Brooke Windham (Anjali Evers). Photo by Ethan Huckaby
The school district has been using a new internet filter, and many students and teachers have complained about the uptick in websites blocked by the district, and the constant struggle to reach out to IT to get certain sites unblocked, as the new filter works through some initial difficulties.
Many rumors have been circulating as to why sites are blocked, from the district being in fear of sites stealing and selling student information, to the school wanting to push an agenda. In reality, the district’s new internet filter is still learning what should and shouldn’t be blocked.
“For how our filter works,” said district hardware and software technician Christopher Lee, “every website is categorized based on what it is.”
Categories can range from things as simple as animals and food, to serious topics like cyberbullying and adult content. When the filter is unable to figure out what category a site should go under, it’s marked as “uncategorized.” Uncategorized sites are immediately blocked for the safety of staff and students. These are many of the sites that teachers then have to reach out to IT to get manually unblocked.
“Although our filter isn’t entirely AI-based and relies on manual updates,” said Lee, “it needs to re-learn many previous websites that might have been accessible in the last filter. Based on what I and many other IT Techs have been seeing, a majority of current blocks are indeed false positives.”
Because the filter is doing its job of blocking appropriate sites, and because it’s still learning what sites should and shouldn’t be blocked, this filter isn’t going to be replaced anytime soon.
This doesn’t stop teachers’ complaints about the filter though. Many teachers have had to rebuild entire lessons because the sites they used to use have all been blocked.
“The curriculum, which we’ve been building and using and improving for years, no longer works,” said English teacher Tracy Apple. “That is a big issue.”
Along with the issue of blocked sites, thumbnails of YouTube videos are blacked out, making it hard for students to find resources they can use.
“Generally, when you’re looking through something like that,” said Apple, “you’re using visual cues to analyze it before you even open it. It takes two to three times longer for my students to even get anything. Even as an adult with a personal account, I have never seen a still screen on YouTube that was inappropriate.”
There is still some hope that the filter will do a better job of blocking the right sites as time goes on.
“Contrary to the idea that 1984 or Fahrenheit 451 is happening in David Douglas,” said Lee, “websites are not blocked based on censorship; there is no ‘hidden agenda’ of trying to censor information or to push students and staff towards certain websites.”
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