Unblock youtube.com at Suffern High School

Earlier this week (the week of February 22nd 2009), Suffern High School and Ramapo Central School District finally did what many students and teachers have been dreaming about for months in their classrooms; they took youtube.com off the 8e6 filter blacklist. However, this was short-lived, and as of the day this is being written, February 26th 2009, the site was blocked once again.

Youtube is one the most useful tools available online today. With the power of the website, people can view movies on basically any topic they wish. This can prove to be a highly useful tool in the world of education, as teachers can pull up or post videos on the site for students to use in the learning process. It is relatively safe too, as there is NO pornographic content on the site at all. Youtube has a direct policy against pornographic content and will delete it within seconds of it being posted.

So then our question is--why is this site blocked directly by the town of Ramapo? It's educational value is tremendous, and every teacher in every department can make use of the site. With thousands of instructional videos, news clips, political addresses, documentaries, art exhibitions and even yes, even music videos (Which can be used by the theatre/music department) this is absolutely nonsensical. Not to mention something even more nonsensical, GOOGLE VIDEO IS NOT BLOCKED!!!! These two content services are effectively the same thing and are in fact linked and owned by the same company. This even makes it so there is an inconvenience when one is searching for videos on google video, as the youtube results (which are far more plentiful than google video results) are inaccessible.

In conclusion, we the undersigned hereby appeal to whatever educational authority who has the power to change school internet policy in Ramapo Central School District to take youtube.com off the 8e6 filter blacklist.