The following article was published as a part of The Seminole’s 2014 April Fool’s issue! The information, quotations, and other content is completely fictitious and should not be considered a true representation of the school, the administration, or other governing entities.
With the new school year around the corner, new policies will be introduced. These plans include the administrators monitoring student-based activities on social media. The policies are being used to help enforce disciplinary actions.
Much of a school’s reputation is affected by information shared on social media. Administrators already have access to data from student-teacher email interaction and discussions on other school-based websites like Blackboard and Edmodo, now their access to information will broaden.
“I don’t find it too far-fetched that they are extending their influence over social media groups,” said English teacher Mr. Robert Gall.
A student from Ocean Port School District in New Jersey was required to remove offensive content from his webpage. Situations like this have occurred in several other states in recent years. The hope is that bad behavior will reduce in Seminole High School through administrative monitoring on Facebook and Twitter.
An account named “Seminole Admin” is to be created for monitoring purposes. The entire Seminole High administration team will have access to this account.
Students should expect administrators to request to join all SHS based groups. For example, Seminole Admin will join existing homework groups. In the club groups, however, club advisors may also request to be a member along with the admin account.
Freshman Teddy Truscott expressed her concern with the new policies, “I’m pretty sure administration doesn’t have enough support to do this and frankly, I find this outrageous.”
The growing popularity of Twitter has not escaped the administration’s attention. A Twitter account with the same name, Seminole Admin, will be created to track tweets. However, because the idea of following every Seminole student is near-impossible, the idea of searching specific hashtags has been proposed.
Assistant Principal Ms. Angel Turner explained other procedures to effectively catch any misconduct on Twitter, “If we receive suspicious information on specific students or groups of students, we plan on searching their registered email to find them.”
The administration at Seminole hopes to emphasize the importance of appropriate student conduct through these new policies.