I’m going off the topic for this one, just because I thought it was out of control.

So, incase you were all worried (because I know you were), schools have started banning MySpace. Actually, this idea blossomed first here in Michigan this past week! “Tell me more,” you say? Of course!

On the first day of a strict policy banning students at St. Hugo of the Hills Catholic School from using social networking Web sites, administrators and parents were online ferreting out those who had yet to comply.

“You get to know their code names,” Judy Martinek, the school’s office manager, said Friday.

Sister Margaret Van Velzen, principal of the Bloomfield Hills school, said the policy took effect Friday in response to concerns about students posting “nasty things on the Internet,” and as an attempt to keep the children safe.

…St. Hugo has had a policy prohibiting its 773 students from posting offensive or inappropriate comments and pictures on the Web for years, Van Velzen said. But the new policy went a step further by banning students from using MySpace and other similar sites all together. Under the policy, students who refuse to delete their accounts will be suspended.

“People know the difference between using social networking for a good reason and for things that would be hurtful,” Van Velzen said.

Under MySpace rules, children 14 years and younger should not have a presence on the site anyway, but, Van Velzen said, the company does not adequately enforce that, and many students simply lie about their age. St. Hugo students with sites who were caught Friday were told to dismantle them.

So…what? Kids who have a MySpace page get SUSPENDED? Whoa, wait a minute.

Sister Margaret Van Velzen, the school’s principal, claims that in order to thoroughly protect the children from scary sexual predators, MySpace MUST be banned! However, I feel that the argument that “sexual predators” lurk on websites such as MySpace seems to me to be an empty-ish point. Call me sheltered, but the creepers that would have come after me or any other student in my class wouldn’t have found us on MySpace, but would have found us from some other way like while we were walking after dark or something. Sure, MySpace does have sexual predators and other crazies or whatever on it, but so does every other website or chatroom. Hell, so does every grocery store you walk into. Does that mean you can’t go shopping with your mom?

Since we’re on the topic of parents, let’s talk about them some more. Doesn’t this MySpace ban kind of cross the line into parenting? Parents should know how to keep their kids safe, and having a school tell them how to do so is kind of an insult. I think if I had a child in that district, I’d be a slight bit peeved. But the large majority of parents support this! WTF? Where is your ownership of your children, man!

I guess if the argument was that MySpace was disrupting the classroom, I’d maybe buy into it a little more. But I think this is kind of stepping on a few constitutional rights or something (…good to know that I’m putting my Political Science minor to work, right?). I suppose that the whole “private school” thing kind of thwarts that argument in that parents sign their life away when they decide to send their children there. Ok, ok…

Perhaps I’m missing the point. Blah blah blah dangerous internet…something or other. Good idea, school! Take away a valuable learning tool! Maybe instead of focusing on that sort of thing, schools should start creating more effective programs to teach children how to avoid situations in which they may be taken advantage of because I think we all know that D.A.R.E. doesn’t do it. Ripping away an internet website from kids instead of teaching them how to avoid predators is like sending them into the world without the proper resources for it! DOESN’T MAKE SENSE!

Parents back school’s MySpace ban
by Frank Witsil
Detroit Free Press 26 March 2007
Full article at WZZM Grand Rapids