The Christ's Hospital Blog

[Richard Ruck]

Julian, I for one applaud the decision on your part to maintain the independence of this forum.

We can all understand the reasons why people at the school might be nervous about the coverage of certain topics, but I would still argue that many worse things can be read in newspapers and magazines or seen on television each and every day. Surely these are not censored within C.H.?

The 'bullying' topic seems to be continually cited as a reason for withholding access to the site. Obviously this particular issue would be a concern to those in whose care the welfare of C.H. pupils is entrusted, but surely it is evident that the offending article only represented the opinion of one individual, and if such opinions are not aired they cannot be argued against, and are merely swept under the carpet. It seems to me that this issue is just a convenient hook onto which the objections can be hung.

I think Graham has summed it all up rather nicely. Participating here can reinforce one's sense of belonging to a wider Old Blue community, and allowing pupils to feel part of this before they even leave the school must surely be a good thing.

[graham]

It really does always come back to the bullying post!! I'm in complete agreement that it isn't appropriate to condone bullying, but I suspect that various boarding school-based movies (e.g. If...) will do more to reinforce the concept of innate boarding-based bullying than discussion of real events on this site.

On a more appropriate note though, if I remember correctly, the offending bullying post ellicited a rather fierce and not so condoning response from other users of the forum. Personally I found that to be rather satisfying and suspect that it may have affected others in a similar fashion. It seems rather susrprising that the school may have been upset by the one post seeming to condone bullying but ignored the 10 others that bit back...

[tobeconfirmed]

Pupils and staff alike here have taken an interest in the new 'Blog' website (that's infact been going for about a month already now; who knows how the Guardian knew about it and no-one at school did!) - particularly in working out who 'Yevgeni' is. Lots of people have infact independently come up with the same person.

[J.R.]

Thanks for the update, Julian.

I'm afraid this all 'smacks' of 'Big Brother' ! (No ! Not the T.V. programme.)

I appreciate there is the aspect of child protection, but..................

I feel a meeting at The Bax coming on in July ?

[TA]

I see no difference between this blog and what pupils have been doing throughout the years i.e. trying to undermine the authoities. Think about it, it's the end of term..many pupils are coming to the end of a life at CH whats the harm in throwing up a middle finger to the rules. Which if I remember correctly were slack at this time of year

[Hendrik]

From the UN declaration of Human Rights:

Article 19.
Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.

So...unless they want to contravene human rights then it will last forever....

indeed. though as Mr Yates tried to convince me, 'Christ's Hospital does not have to abide by Human Rights Convention as it is not a democratic institution'.
so either Christ's Hospital is flaunting it's totalitarian ideology, or a certain member of the Chemistry dept. is full of of sh1t!
(i suspect both)

If telling the truth, and enabling others to do so, can give one the lable 'loose cannon' then JT most certainly is!
As for joining the battery of loose cannons, few cannons have a tongue as loose as this one...

[Happy]

I have been following the blog since inception. Personally, I agree with those who would praise its style and delivery, although I see how the staff do not want to see CH trashed online.
What I fail to understand is why this creative little gem is not used by school as an insight into the problems/issues which will not be revealled through normal channels, housemaster observation, a confessional or being lynched on Big Side carrying something illicit.

I agree with Julian too and I have something else to add to the filtering aspect. My sis stopped using her CH email account after they were convinced that their mail was being read, not just monitored by the school.

Plus ca change.... and all that? No wonder these children feel the need to write blogs - it looks as though they are completely sat on! I checked up on some other major public schools and none of their members feel pushed into Yevgeni-style subversivism.

You're right, we do need to foster the link between Blue and Old Blue into a community aspect. If the school is obstructing this, one should remind them that at the end of the day, its the school that will lose out. They want us to contribute financially but not ask questions? I would not be comfortable making a contribution in the current climate.

[Richard Ruck]

I feel a meeting at The Bax coming on in July ?

Perhaps we should get this sorted out (any excuse for a few pints as well). Nothing formal, but it would be interesting to chat about the issues of the day.

Can anyone confirm whether we can get to see the Retreat, or are the school authorities still wanting to restrict attendance to pupils, parents / families etc.?

[J.R.]

I think the general idea is we meet and park at the Bax for a Council of War, then casually stroll into school.

More details nearer the date ???

[yevgeni]

What an excellent forum you have here. You say on an earlier post

"We will have to decide at some point whether the merit of allowing the pupils access to the site during term time outweighs the loss through having to moderate the content - my personal belief having thought long and hard is that it doesn't, and hence the site remains as-is. It will be a real shame if we can't bridge that gap between school and Old Blues through this site.... "

I agree especially with the bridging of gaps part. To that end I would like to invite all members of this site to make use of The Blog if you want current pupils to be able to reflect on past Blue wisdom. It is shameful that the school have blocked this site, and speaks volumes of their insular policies. I will be unable to post replies to this topic or indeed monitor it since the school blocks the site and it was a fair mission simply posting today.

I believe that what is required is a single site for all Blues, completely independent of the school. CH will of course resist this, but I believe it has to be all or nothing. Let me therefore ask you on behalf of all the pupils not dumb down this forum for our sakes. The free spirit is key and if pupils feel that this site were in any way unrepresentative they would not visit it. I would be interested to speak with Julian with a view to merging The Blog, this forum and Lousey into such a single place where Blues past and present could freely discuss the school. I have received mail from young Old Blues requesting a move such as this, which would hopefully allow interaction across the generations.

If anybody (especially Julian) wish to contact me there is a link at the top left of The Blog which says "About Me". Click this, then "Send Me An Email".

[Happy]

Welcome Yevgeni. Is there an internet cafe in Horsham or are you using a mobile phone to contact the forum? Well done mate.

[J.R.]

Are you NOT allowed your personal lap-tops at school ??????

[tobeconfirmed]

Are you NOT allowed your personal lap-tops at school ??????

Yes we are, but we're not allowed to connect them to the school network, and therefore the internet.

[J.R.]

Thanks for that tbs.

I see your problem.

Censorship in the name of the 'Child Protection Act'.

George Orwell is alive and well and living in Sussex.

Might be a convention on The Retreat day !

[willosaurus]

Surely the fact that the school is filtering internet traffic is simply an opportunity for pupils to engage in some creative work and test themselves against the IT staff. I don't know anything about the current IT infrastructure (except that everyone has an email address - when I played a football match at the school last year there was a list of default pupil ids/passwords left in plain view in the teacher's common room!). However, assuming a standard traffic filtering system, plenty of possible approaches come to mind:

-Use a free anonymous HTTP proxy.
-Set up an external server to pipe content through another protocol (email, FTP, any of the P2Ps, or write your own) - still blockable, but correctly configured would leave people chasing shadows. Ditto, run a server from within the firewall.
-Mirror content to a site that staff want pupils to have access to, or don't mind (e.g. yahoo groups or something) (a finesse might be to disguise content (crypto, change file extension etc.)
-Hack the firewall/filtering system (remotely or just break into the building)
-Distribute a digest of popular content on memorysticks, CDs etc.

Of course the IT people can play whack-a-mole, but with persistence, there's a good chance that you could end up 'winning' either because they don't have enough time to do their 'real' work, or by forcing them to apply filters so widely that they are unable to provide an acceptable service. Might as well open up a few new fronts by creating more pressing problems for the IT bods to deal with (e.g. access the Headmaster's email and publish it somewhere - that ought to push the issue of inbound censorship down the stack).

Doubtless such things, though probably more ingenious and devious in scope than my addled brain can conjure up, are already taking place in spades and the perps are simply to wise to brag about it.

Ignoring the nominal goal of bypassing the filters, the experience of developing a system that *really* worked (easy to use by non technical users, largely self administrating, highly available etc.) would be of enormous value.