Anna Ensberg
neutrality | Photo courtesy of the FCC
PUSD depends on the Synergy program as a way to manage data about students’ grades. However, recent technical issues with the program temporarily rendered it useless and disrupted the grading system. From around Friday, Dec. 15 to Wednesday, Dec. 20, Synergy was unreliable and aggravated students and teachers alike.
On Thursday, Dec. 14, just before the problems with Synergy arose, the Federal Communications Commission voted to eliminate the Net Neutrality laws. These laws prevented internet service providers from controlling the different kinds of traffic on the internet.
This timing seems too coincidental to not have correlation. MC students speculate that the two events are in fact, related.
“In my mind, there’s no doubt,” junior Doug Fuller said. “The internet people are plotting against us. I know there’s no evidence, but that’s because someone is hiding it from us.”
Others’ suspicions stem from the fact that all teachers have refused to comment on the issue of this conspiracy theory.
a mysterious company after the
FCC eliminates Net Neutrality?
“‘Internet people?’ What?” said English teacher Matt Palom.
The idea that so-called “internet people” control everything we can do on the internet has been circulating through school conspiracists for years. However, school-wide internet issues usually have definite explanations, according to Fuller.
“They usually say that they were fixing the system, or something like that. Not this time,” Fuller said.
Theories about the cause of the recent Synergy issues have caused uproar in the student body. An anonymous FCC official said in a statement Friday, Dec. 22 that there might be malicious “internet people” behind the problems, but that they cannot confirm anything.
