unscholarly

Once again, the lovely institution I call "college" has decided to tighten up its internet "dirt filters". Good, right? Um, no. You see, this particular filter has a tendency to be prejudiced and hypocritical...as much as a digital creation can be anyway. About three months ago, said filter decided that it didn't like Myspace and placed a FORBIDDEN "Mature Adult Content" screen where there should have been a sign-in screen. Did it do the same for Facebook? No. What about Blogger? Nope. Live Journal, Wordpress, Twitter? Negative. Just Myspace. Yesterday, I logged into my other blogger account to find that all of my pictures had been blocked and now, I have no way to see what they look like after I put them in a post. Why? Apparently they are FORBIDDEN "Pornography"...the so-called pornography is actually pictures from a trip to the park...only two of the photos contain people and all of the people in those two photos are quite modestly dressed-I guess sweaters and jeans are just too revealing. The photo host site I used to post the pics. was Photobucket, so I paid a visit to make sure the entire site wasn't being blocked. Nope. Just my account. Lovely.

So, why don't I do anything about it?

I have. When I found out that Myspace was blocked, I e-mailed computer services and reminded them that Myspace has never been blocked, and in case computer services suddenly deemed it necessary to block Myspace, other sites needed to be blocked as well. The following day, I received a reply to my message in the form of a generated e-mail assuring me that Myspace had been unblocked and my "help ticket" had been successfully handled. Not so. Myspace was and continues to be blocked, despite my attempts to convince anyone that this school's internet filter is a diabolical menace. I made sure that my Facebook status reflected my feelings about the internet situation and then moved on to the matter of my school. For one, someone has to be controling the internet filter settings, and two, this person is also controling the help tickets and what has been done to solve problems. This is the same person who gets to determine when I am "mature" and "adult". I don't like that idea very much, but there's not much that I can do. I am resigning myself to the fact that slowly, but surely, my university will find some way to destroy all web-based activities that are not scholastic in nature. And know what? I am paying for this internet with my "private-university" priced tuition. Awesome.
-Me.