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aneeshm
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Indore , Madhya Pradesh
Jul 2001
time: 10:51
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A bizzare tale of school bureaucarcy gone horribly wrong . . . . .
quote:
Thirteen Kutztown Area High School students are facing felony charges for tampering with district-issued laptop computers.
According to parent testimony and confirmed by an otherwise vaguely-worded letter from the Kutztown Police Department, students got hold of the system's secret administrative password and reconfigured their computers to achieve greater Internet and network access.
Some students used the newfound freedom to download music and inappropriate images from the Internet.
James Shrawder spoke on behalf of a group of parents of six of the accused at a June 20 school board meeting. He said the administration may have railroaded the process by not providing authorities with the whole story.
"That's absurd," Superintendent Brenda S. Winkler said after the board meeting, in response to Shrawder's allegations that the administration withheld information until the end of the school year.
Shrawder asked that the school board act in order to reverse the damage done by the administration.
Shrawder said the secret password "50Trexler," was widely-known among the student body and distributed early in the school year. It allowed between 80 and 100 students to reconfigure their laptops, he said.
The more computer-savvy students began to disable the administrations' ability to spy on the students' computer use. For others, it became a game, trying to outsmart the administration and compete with fellow students who held the secret, Shrawder said.
"I don't know why this is such a big deal," he said. "At no time was the security of the server breached, and I don't know that it has cost the taxpayers any money."
Winkler agreed that the server, where grades and other private records are stored, was never threatened.
Shrawder acknowledged that the students broke school rules, but he and the other parents protested what they believe is the heavy-handed approach to the problem.
Most of the students accused were freshmen, but a few were sophomores and juniors. None of the accused were seniors.
Parents also worried that a felony conviction would permanently damage their child's record for an infraction that may otherwise have resulted in a grounding if it were discovered by a parent.
"I don't think they knew what this could do to their future," said LeAnn Shoemaker, a parent of one of the accused.
Her 15-year-old son John, who will be a sophomore next fall, agreed.
"I knew it was against school policy," he said. "But I didn't know it was a felony."
Winkler said the administration could not comment on student disciplinary action.
"We continue to collaborate with police," she said.
She also noted that charges have not been formally issued and could not comment on the perceived harsh penalty.
School Board President Don C. Vymazal said he sympathized with the parents.
"They are concerned and we would be too," he said.
For the moment, parents were uncertain how to react to the threat of charges against their children. Paperwork is hung up in county juvenile court system and the only indication of the charges is the letter sent to parents and signed by Officer Walter J. Skavinsky of the Kutztown Police Department.
The Skavinsky letter, dated May 31, says the police were contacted on May 2 by members of the high school staff. An investigation found that 13 students had violated the school's permitted use policy and gained greater access to the school's Internet and intranet resources.
Skavinsky consulted with the Berks County District Attorney's office and recommended charges of "Computer Trespass," in violation of PA criminal code section 7615, which carries a third degree felony charge.
The letter tells parents that juveniles charged with a crime "must present themselves in a timely manner to the arresting police department for the purposes of fingerprinting and identification."
The iBook laptops were issued to all high school students last fall in an experimental program with Apple computers.
The program will cost up to $900,000 over the next four years.
Winkler reaffirmed the district's commitment to the program saying it has been "a learning experience."
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This is what happens when an entrenched bureaucracy is afraid of technology .
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Vesayen
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Solution: Kill them.
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aneeshm
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Indore , Madhya Pradesh
Jul 2001
time: 10:51
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The award for stating the obvious goes to . . . . . . Kidicious ! If soemone commits a crime , they should get punished ! How insightful and incisive it that ?!
The operative word here is , of course , the "if" . . . . . . .
EDIT : Could a mod please correct the misspelling in the title ( "highscholers" to "highschoolers" ) ?
Last edited by aneeshm on 26-06-2005 at 12:01
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aneeshm
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Indore , Madhya Pradesh
Jul 2001
time: 10:51
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@ Kid ,
No , that wasn't a criticism of you , as it were , just of the utterly obvious stuff you said .
@ All ,
I don't get it . The school's usage policy read :
quote:
Will students be able to install software on the laptop?
No, students installing software on school owned computers is a direct violation of the KASD Computer Policy. Students who violate the policy will be disciplined. All of the software necessary to integrate the laptop technology into the curriculum will be installed when the laptop is issued to the student. Security monitoring software will be used on all of the computers to assure that software is not loaded on the laptops. See the "Software" webpage in regards to the software installed on each laptop.
Will students be able to email, chat, and play games on their laptops?
Chat, IM, games, and email software will be removed from all computers. Student use of email, chatting, IM, and game playing is a direct violation of the KASD computer policy. Students who violate the computer policy will be disciplined.
What will the school do to help prevent students from going to inappropriate sites?
The KASD has a software/hardware product which is designed to help monitor all Internet sites that students attempt to access. This software/hardware blocks inappropriate sites and also logs a history of every site that each user opens. Students who attempt to find inappropriate sites will be disciplined. The current KASD content filter meets CIPA guidelines.
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So what exactly can they do ? Use it as a flashy , trendy "Apple" papergweight ?
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Vince278
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I was never a fan of the "Apples in the classrooms" here. My kids used them in school. Unfortunately, they are not learning skills they can use in the real world where Apples are the exception. I'm surprised that a school near here can afford to loan out laptops.
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aneeshm
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Indore , Madhya Pradesh
Jul 2001
time: 10:51
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First , a thank you to the mod who changed the title .
@ TLC
So true . The almost ten years of learning "Word , Excel , PowerPoint , MS-DOS , Windows" before I got to start on real CS were almost a total waste ( except when they taught us the fundamentals of BASIC , because that made clear the fundamentals of almost all languages ) . And because the sullabus was so specific for those ten years , all that info is useless to someone working on another platform - say GNU/Linux ( forget for a moment that to customise GNU/Linux , you have to be moderately tech-savvy in the first place , and also be comfortable with computers ) .
The result of such a policy is that if you pick up an average student from the CS class and put him on a Mac , he won't know where to start . Hell , most don't know even after said ten years , plus another of CS , how to invoke the compiler from the command-line with any desired options ( actually , they most probably don't know that there is any such thing as a compiler option ) , or how to effectively use the command line .
Basic computer literacy , yes . Concentrating ten years' worth of education on how to operate one application on one platform , with no concern as to the lifetime of said platform or product , or the level of comfort with computers in general , definitely no .
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Dr Strangelove
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I'd like to see the statute of the criminal code covering this. While destruction of public property may be a felony they didn't destroy anything. It should be possible to restore the original code. The only possible felony they might have committed would be copyright violations if they illegally downloaded copyrighted music. If they have bypassed the safeguards and were smart enough to erase the computer's history of where they downloaded the music I don't see how this could have been traced, unless it was traced at the source or along the path from the source.
The thing is that spyware and spam producers inflict damage on innocent internet users' computers without fear of retribution. Their programs often interfere with the function of the victim's computer. The law refuses to punish their behavior, so I don't see why it should excessively punish these kids. Expel them from the course for a year, thereby threatening them with the loss of future prospects for employment in the lucrative computer industry.
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26-06-2005 10:26
Kid is a fascist 
ACK!
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