Because many students attempted to bypass Powell High School firewalls on their laptops, action had to be taken recently to stop it.

Vice Principal Mr. Tim Wormald announced that the use of VPNs  — Virtual Private Networks — were potentially damaging the newly-issued Lenovos and the administration would perform laptop checks and hand out disciplinary action as necessary. VPNs are extensions you can download from a web browser, that trick the server into thinking you are on a different website.

Students, teachers and administrators were impacted differently.

“For instance [science teacher] Mrs. [Wendy] Smith, can’t access certain videos for like Environmental Science,” junior Gunnar Coen said.

Dean of Students Mr. Scott McKenzie said perhaps students don’t realize how lucky they are to have a laptop computer.

“To pay $30 for an educational device; that’s amazing,” McKenzie said. “[You] can’t put a price on a device like this. My opinion is don’t abuse that. Just follow the rule. Use it for the way that it was meant to be used.”

One student who downloaded the extension said he did so rather matter-of-factly.

“Well, in seventh grade I think, they kept blocking the sites I was going to so I just, I already knew about VPNs because I used to build computers and stuff, so I just installed a Chrome extension and kept it kind of on the down low,” sophomore Jacob Buckman said.

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In an unrelated tech matter, PHS administrators also said they are addressing the fact the firewall is currently blocking many sites. Teachers learned during their early release meeting Sept. 13 that some of the sites in question aren’t rated and must manually freed up.