by Emily Reichard, reporter

The school’s administration had prepared for various issues with the laptops, but a security breach was perhaps the last thing they thought would happen within the first week of distributing them. Unfortunately, last week, the students of Jim Thorpe High School found a way to bypass the school’s security on the laptops, using a VPN, or a virtual private network, to gain access to the private network from the public network without any security issues.

The first week having the laptops was hectic for students and administration alike. Many websites, such as certain Wikipedia pages and Yahoo Answers were blocked, and some still are. Students were becoming frustrated when trying to complete their work. They felt as if the security was too restrictive, blocking sites that last year were never a problem.

“I think it (the school’s security) is too restrictive. We need to use some websites to do projects for school, but they are blocked by the filters,” said an anonymous Jim Thorpe junior. After all the laptops had been distributed, the school fixed the issues with some of the websites to allow the students access to the material they needed for classes. However, the students still felt restrained.

In an effort to bypass the filters, students downloaded a VPN, and some even found a way to bypass the administrator’s account. With this, they were able to go on many sites that had originally been blocked by school administrators. There were some students who used the VPN to play games on the laptops. However, others used it to open up websites that they could not access with the school’s filters. When the administration found out, they made changes to the security and blocked the VPN. The school even dealt out some punishments.

“Some students received suspensions because they had bypassed the administrator’s account,” says Mr. Brown, Jim Thorpe’s Director of Technology.

The school’s security was not equipped to block the VPN, which allowed the students to easily access the private network. However, Brown was not unaware of the existence of VPNs.

“The laptops have the ability to block a large variety of things,” Brown told me, “Unfortunately, there are literally thousands of these applications, so it is impossible to block all of them.”

Since the incident with the VPNs, the security has been made more restrictive in an effort to squash any hopes of repeating it. Students at the high school have many different opinions on whether or not the use of the VPN was unjust.

“I think that the students should not have downloaded the VPN, but I do think the school should trust us more. Not all of us were doing bad things with the VPN,” says Jim Thorpe senior, Emily Sailer. Some of the students agree that the the school should give the students more freedom on the laptops, and that the use of the VPN only stemmed from the restrictive security. However, others feel that the use of the VPN was unjustified.

According to Jim Thorpe senior, Brian DeMarco, the use of the VPN was not right. “Even if they didn’t do anything inappropriate, it was still wrong,” DeMarco tells me.

Some students even feel that the security on the laptops isn’t restrictive enough. “There are still a lot of holes in it. We can still do a lot of things on the laptops,” says an anonymous Jim Thorpe junior.

As the administration continues to develop the One-to-One program, it is no surprise they will encounter issues along the way. However, the school officials and its faculty are hopeful that the laptops will be a benefit in the long run.