Senior Raven Lewis sits at her computer screen, shocked by the “Cracker Barrel” home page sitting in front of her. Although the word “cracker” is blocked online, her slight misspelling of the word, turning it into “craker,” still managed to get past the Perry Township’s safe search. Lewis, like several other students, is outraged about the safe search not being safe enough.

“There’s a reason ‘naked mole rat’ is blocked, and there’s a reason YouTube is blocked,” Lewis said. “We are only high schoolers, we don’t understand the real world. The vulgarity we can find on these Chromebooks is worse than anything a teenager could ever say or do.”

Lewis recalls when she was a freshman, prior to SHS getting chromebooks, and how school was once a safe area. She believes that chromebooks, even with the search block, are still risky business, and doesn’t comprehend how some of the things are still unblocked.

Principal Ryan Bright explained the process of which the administration decides what is and isn’t blocked. For example, YouTube is blocked because it can create a distraction to students trying to do work, and not everything on there is “school appropriate.” Other words are blocked in fear of offending people.

“We block things due to different criteria,” Bright said. “We have the word ‘dice’ blocked because we fear the cubicle shape may be too harsh on young minds. On the other hand, the word like ‘marble’ isn’t blocked, despite it being related to dice, because we want all our students to be well-rounded, and a marble would be a good influence for them, unlike the cubical dice.”

Bright says it’s come as a big surprise to him that kids are still able to get past this safe search and is worried it might dilute their education. He hopes, for the students’ sake, that he will be able to block nearly everything besides what would be solely a source of education. His list of what will, as he hopes, be blocked in the near future consists of Wikipedia, all foreign movie sites, Sparknotes and even Google.

“Honestly, at this point, there is just so much the staff needs to seclude the students from, I’m not even sure whose idea it was to get chromebooks anyway,” Bright said. “Spiders, clowns, the color orange, literally any movie with Zac Efron, it’s all just too much for our students to handle, and I want to take that traumatizing opportunity away from them.”

Lewis, who was written off using her chromebook due to exposure to the Cracker Barrel website, says she is content to hear that the staff is doing something to put a stop to the flexibility of the safe search. Until then, Lewis will be reciting back to children’s books and the Bible until the web is safe enough for the student population.