By IRENE FEHER

The School Site Council (SSC) voted to keep the ban on electronic device usage during nutrition and lunch at its meeting on April 29.

“It was very clear that the electronic devices were only to be used during nutrition and lunch,” Principal Deb Smith said in the SSC meeting, “I also made very clear the responsibilities of the devices and the consequences of not using it properly.”

Three Twitter pages were created in April using the school’s name that posted derogatory and racist comments about the students and staff of Daniel Pearl Magnet High School. A faculty member’s photo was used as a profile picture on one page that included profanity and pornography, which could mislead others to think that page belonged to the teacher.

The pages were quickly deactivated once they were reported to the administrators. The principal and the staff are still investigating who created the hurtful Twitter pages.

“I located many students who were following the pages and interviewed them about it,” Smith said. “But I had a hard time finding out who was behind it.”

Students had been allowed to use electronics during nutrition and lunch since Sept. 9 after the SSC  to voted to allow students to use them. But that was revoked on April 10 following the discovery of the offending Twitter pages.

At the April SSC meeting, English teacher Paul Viskanta mentioned that better education of digital responsibility could have prevented this issue from happening.

“I understand the devices are a big part of the culture for the younger generation,” Viskanta said in front of the council. “So, we should take the opportunity to teach electronic responsibility to the students to prevent the misuse of them.”

One of the biggest issues brought upon the removal of cell phone use is that the newspaper and yearbook students can’t use them to report any events during school hours to social media.

Student Body Vice President Waldir Henriquez argued the perks of using electronics during school hours.

“By having the cell phones, students are able to do their homework when they don’t have the time at home,” Henriquez said. “Also, there aren’t always enough computers for all the students to work on and the computer lab isn’t always open.”

Viskanta also had a problem seeing students charge their phones and hearing explicit music in the hallways. School administrative assistant Diane Seiger argued that students don’t always use their electronics for homework or any schoolwork.

“Students can do their homework on paper and from their textbooks,” Seiger said.

English teacher JaYoung Kim mentioned at the meeting that the school originally gave  students a privilege to use cell phones rather than banning the usage.

“We’re trying to protect our community to those rude comments and we’re looking after their own safety,” Kim said.

Smith and Kim said that they can’t be responsible for every student’s digital safety with their electronics and supervise what they do.

“I can’t monitor social media for 450 students and the school is responsible if something is done during school hours,” Smith said in front of the council. “I need parents to take charge and learn how to monitor what’s on their child’s phone.”

To better prevent the misuse of the electronics, SSC members recommended the students to be part of a committee. This committee will promote better awareness and digital safety that will make the cell phone policy more thorough.

“The policy revision doesn’t come in one night,” parent Jill Spector said. “It has to be a program for a committee to come up with a plan to have this policy better in place.”