Campus technology officials unblocked a website after students and staff expressed concerns about it being inaccessible.
Campus technology officials use Palo Alto Networks, an online security service, to filter websites accessible via the campus Wi-Fi. The service prevents malware and viruses, and gives users complete control over network traffic, protecting them from unknown threats, according to its website, paloaltonetworks.com.
Corinne Prudente, acting sophomore, discovered that the fan fiction website “Archive of Our Own” was blocked last month. Prudente creates artwork for some of the site’s authors and said she did not understand why the site was blocked.
“There’s no way that site has a virus. There aren’t even any ads,” she said. “There’s a small portion of adult content, but my public high school didn’t ban this website.”
Fan fiction is a specific genre of storytelling that is predominately created and consumed by women, Prudente said.
“The genre is often shrugged off as invalid, but a lot of writers start as fan fiction writers because it’s a great way to get constructive feedback from people who are interested in the same thing and rooting for you to do well,” she said. “It’s a way for people to connect and inspire each other to make more art, so it’s frustrating that our school is limiting our creativity, especially when so many students are involved in creative fields.”
Prudente sent a message to the Help Desk, requesting reconsideration of the block. The response was that the site was blocked because of pornographic content, but could be recategorized if she provided an educational purpose for it or validation from a faculty member.
Prudente met with Kristen Burkholder, access services librarian, who has published work on Archive of Our Own. Burkholder wrote a Feb. 16 letter to campus technology officials, vouching for its educational value.
“It’s quite concerning, as a librarian, to hear about a college restricting access to information,” Burkholder said. “Archive of Our Own is a fan fiction site run by the Organization for Transformative Works, which publishes reviewed academic journals on fan fiction and transformative works.”
The group is a nonprofit organization run for fans to provide access and preserve the history of fan works and fan cultures, according to transformativeworks.org.
Burkholder said a small portion of the site has adult content, but that it shouldn’t matter because students are adults.
“I can see why they wouldn’t allow websites with strictly porn, and that would probably cause bandwidth issues as well,” she said. “I tend to be against censorship in general, though. It’s a shame not to get a source material if someone is interested.”
Archive of Our Own was made accessible again Feb. 20.
How sites get blocked
Palo Alto Networks sorts websites into categories and allows users to filter up to 60 different categories. Officials filter out seven of those categories, said Gerry Hunt, chief information officer.
“All seven of the categories we filter out are for IP reasons of some sort,” Hunt said. “It’s not a moral decision at all.”
The blocked categories include hacking, phishing, malware, and peer-to-peer sites. Officials also decided to block sites with adult content about five years ago because they were taking up almost all of the bandwidth at night, Hunt said.
“We could censor for moral reasons if we wanted to, but we don’t. The insinuation that there’s some purposeful censorship by the university is misinformed,” Hunt said. “We’re not over here looking at websites all day long to inspect their content, but, because we use the service, some sites are bound to be categorized incorrectly.”
After receiving Prudente’s message, officials looked into the site to see if it was any sort of a threat to university bandwidth. It wasn’t, so they removed the filter from the site, Hunt said.
Censorship concerns
Prudente said she is happy with the renewed access to the fan fiction website, but the bigger problem is censorship in general.
“We’re forced to live here until we’re 21, and the only Wi-Fi option is OCU’s,” she said. “We pay for this Wi-Fi that doesn’t work half the time and then they censor our content.”
Students pay a general fee of $115 per credit hour per semester. The fee provides general budget funding for campus technology and other campus services.
“It feels like pay to play. If you can afford data, you can do whatever you want, but that’s not an option for everyone,” Prudente said.
Hunt said he hopes students understand that he has to prevent data security risks.
“Our main purpose here is teaching and learning, so I can’t allow sites that eat up our resources to the extent that we can’t perform those duties,” he said.
Hunt said he encourages students to submit a Help Desk ticket in a tactful manner if they have concerns with any future website filters. Officials will respond, but it may take some time, he said.
Students can submit questions and concerns about campus technology to the Help Desk at help.okcu.edu.
Leave a Reply