By Sara Koochagian

The Snapchat app is blocked on the school’s open wifi to keep students from using it during the school day. Ever since the initiation of BYOT a few years ago, the public wifi for students has had the ability to block certain websites for desktops and apps on phones. Some apps that are blocked include certain YouTube links, as well as Twitter being difficult to go on with other social media apps. One of the main applications that is blocked is Snapchat. This means the students can’t use the application during class unless they have cell service in the building. These students voice their opinions.

“I think it’s a waste of time to block it because we find ways to just unblock it again,” said senior Dominique Davis.

“It just shows that school doesn’t trust us enough and it just makes us more tech savvy in finding ways to work around it,” explains junior Sean Enright.

“I mean…as much as I’d prefer it not to be blocked, but I don’t really see any reason for the school to allow it. There really isn’t an academic use…but again, I’d want to be able to use it if it was up to me,” said junior Jack Davis.

“I mean in an educational environment there isn’t really a logical reason for snapchat to be unblocked. These days it’s a lot more popular than texting, so it’s distracting students (including myself) a ton. In the end, I don’t really mind. It’s not that I openly support the ban, it’s just that I’m ok with it,” said senior Lucas Strigel.

With social media on the rise during this digital age, restricting Snapchat has brought some students to find loopholes around the system in order to be able to use the Snapchat application. Last year, some students would use a VPN (virtual private network), which allows you to go onto any applications that are blocked on the wifi. However, once the students came back this summer, the ability to use VPN was blocked.