Students suspended over pornography

Twenty male students have been suspended from Murray Bridge High School for accessing pornographic video clips on personal computer files at school.

That first paragraph alerted me that the article was going to be frustrating and have huge holes where necessary information should have been. Articles where technology is a central topic really must be written or at least edited by somebody familiar with the technology. The terminology used by this author shows that she clearly does not grasp the concepts involved.

An Education Department spokesman yesterday confirmed the Year 9, 10 and 11 students were suspended for up to a week after a "routine audit" by an Information Technology technician uncovered the files. The school is investigating how the students obtained the material.

"The school will be looking at the possibility of the material being accessed outside of the school and brought to the site in the form of a CD-ROM," the spokesman said.

While it is possible that pornographic material was brought from a student's home it is far more likely that it was acquired over the internet. It is magnitudes easier to send/retrieve/download files over the wire than it is to use recording media.

"This is not a significant problem across the public school system or even at Murray Bridge High School due to the Internet filtering software we have in place and the monitoring of student activity that takes place.

"The department has in place special filtering software at the Internet gateway to stop students from accessing inappropriate material."

And this shows that the spokesman has as little grasp of the technology involved as the reporter. There is no filtering software that will stop people from accessing pornography over an internet connection. Until artificial intelligence is developed than can survey and judge a graphic based on subjective criteria there is no way for filter software to separate a pornographic picture from a mundane one. Filtering software works by denying access to known and suspected pornographic loci. It is easily defeated by using various search engines or by simply using email to move the contraband. Don't get me wrong - filtering software is an excellent first step in forbidding access to improper information but it cannot be successful without adequate human supervision.

"At schools there are also administrators who monitor Internet usage." School principal Merilyn Klem refused to comment but in a faxed statement she said it was "unacceptable for students to have this material in their files and each student is clearly aware of their responsibility with regard to their files".

Given that 20 students were suspended over three grade levels I would hazard that the monitors are not doing an adequate job.

"It is clear that a number of students knew it was there and did not inform their teachers," she said. "We are continuing to follow through with students and parents."

Join me now in a dangerous round of assumptions. Unfortunately it is necessary as this article is truly lacking in some basic information. Where was this pornography? Most likely it was in email. A regular audit probably found a suspect file in one student's email folders and traced it around and about to all of the people who had either sent or been sent those files. The principal's choice of words with "a number of students knew it was there" seems to also say that a number of students did not know it was there. If we were talking about regular files placed by students in their normal storage locations then she could have been confident saying that all of them knew it was there.

So we're most likely talking about porn sent around through the school email system. This opens up questions on whether the suspensions were deserved. If somebody sends me a pornographic image and I delete the email I have met the criteria of viewing pornography and having pornographic material in my files, the reasons given for the suspensions. How many of those 20 students did not forward the porn and instead deleted the emails? How many saved the images? How many did forward them to others? The article is woefully lacking in meaningful details.

Is suspension the answer in any case? It seems as if suspension is an automatic first punishment these days. You never hear of school discipline that does not involve either suspension or expulsion. I had an experience similar to the one in this article. Some friends and I were using the library computer. We used a crossword generating program to make a naughty crossword puzzle. The librarian, who took monitoring the computer seriously, caught us. She punished us by having us file books and clean shelves on our lunch breaks for the next week. We were also not allowed to use the computer without a monitor for quite some time and she let us know in no uncertain terms that if we ever tried something like that again that she was going to call our parents and let them know what we were doing in school. Not a one of us ever screwed around on a school computer again.

Aren't mass suspensions a bit of overkill?

(Tip credit to Jean E)