Teach42

Illinois is the new hot spot for DOPA-like legislation. As first reported by Michael Stephens, Senator Matt Murphy is seeking to ban all social networking websites from schools and libraries. What’s a social networking website? Well, why restrict yourself by defining it?

I learned today through Jenny’s blog that Senator Murphy has a blog of his own! A few nights ago, he had a ‘live chat’ of the strangest nature. I’m not trying to be critical here or anything, but if I were going to organize a live chat, I’d actually create a chat room. It isn’t hard, and I could point him to some free solutions for doing so. Regardless, his ‘chat’ was actually a series of comments left on a blog post. It was pretty confusing to wade through. Some people wrote elegant speeches imploring him to reconsider the bill, to which he would make a brief reply. Jenny did identify a true highlight of the conversation though:

…the 12th comment, in which Detective Bob Riordan, who is working with Murphy on this legislation, notes that Blogger is in the list of “top 10 social networking sites.”

What site is Murphy’s blog on? Blogger. So apparently, Murphy’s current bill would ban his own site - where he hosted the “live chat” to discuss banning social networking sites in libraries - from being accessed in libraries, even by adults.

Personally, I would love to add my two cents to the conversation, but apparently comments were only open for two hours on Thursday night. In fact, despite the fact that Blogger is in the top 10 social networking sites, Senator Murphy isn’t feeling too social at the moment. Comments have been turned off throughout the entire blog, and there is no direct way to contact him. Obviously he values your input, but only when he has time in his schedule to allow you to give it.

He does emphasize throughout the conversation that the bill is not a final draft and that he has two primary goals for it. “First, I want to raise awareness of the threat predators on these sites pose to our kids. Second, I want to advance a dialogue on how we can minimize this threat.”

While that sounds nice, if that’s truly the case then I respect him even less for just tossing out there a piece of legislation that has the potential to do tremendous harm to school’s ability to educate students about internet safety and appropriate usage. The only analogy that comes to mind is someone standing up in a theater and yelling “FIRE” in order to start a conversation about improving fire safety there.

As I pointed out before, there’s another internet bill in Illinois right now that’s up for discussion. I strongly suggest that people raise awareness of Dan Kotowski’s Internet Safety in Education Act. It’s very well thought out and much more deserving of our attention than that social networking garbage. Don’t bring attention to the bad, without mentioning the alternative!

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