“THEY BLOCKED SNAPCHAT, THIS IS PRISON!”

Pentucket Senior Owen Meyer was fuming as he opened his Snapchat at school only to see the words “could not refresh. Please ty again.” Like many others, Meyer took to twitter to express his rage.

Unfortunately, Snapchat is not the only social media site to disappear from Pentucket students’ hands. But why is it so necessary to keep students off these sites during the school day? Well, it all might just boil down to a recent scandal taking over Exeter High School.

A sex scandal is hitting the community of Exeter pretty harshly as naked pictures of students are reportedly being sold. Several students are under investigation for, as a student, Josh Dang, says, going up to students and asking, “Hey do you want to buy some nude photos of people in school?”

Dang says he turned down the offer, but there were a variety of students that paid for these pictures shared through social media. There were so many students buying the photos that it is reported that one of the sellers made about $1,000.

Police Chief Richard Kane would not comment on the nature of the incident, but says “the police department is actively investigating.” Troubling enough, the photos were said to be of nude, or partially nude, females sent to male students, but Kane mentioned that he does not believe any charges will be filed.

The shocking nature of the scandal leaves Pentucket in a tough situation; either ignore it, or take action and block social media in the building. Unfortunately for us, they chose to start blocking these media sites.

According to librarian Rachel Costello, the middle school teachers asked for Snapchat to be blocked because “they were apparently having issues with students being inappropriate.” She went on to say that since the high school server is connected with the middle school, well, goodbye Snapchat.

Even if Pentucket is worried about a copycat Exeter situation, how would blocking Snapchat solve the issue? If a person were to take a scandalous photo, would they not take it outside of school, on their own time? Snapchat at school is mostly used in study hall when there is “nothing to do” according to both Pentucket Sophomore, Madison Carney, and senior Hannah Zaneski. It’s all clean fun.

Thus, students are ultimately disappointed. Pentucket senior Devan Belliveau said, “I’m annoyed. We had it for three years, why block it now?”

Senior Michaela Pierce responded with, “Everything [the school] blocks, people find a way around it and get back on.”

Junior Baileigh Henderson took all this in and perfectly concluded that “it’s unfair that [snapchat and other media sites are being blocked], they have no solid reason for it.”

All Pentucket is really doing is unnecessarily taking away the freedom students hardly ever have. As Meyer said, “THIS IS PRISON.”