Sturgis Students Turn to Social Networking

By Parth Patel, staff reporter

Recently on Twitter there has been an account created called Sturgis Problems which discusses the problems at Sturgis, as well as another account called Sturgis Insults which has insulted students. Both of these accounts are believed to be created by Sturgis students themselves but don’t reflect too well on the students and the school itself. Sturgis Insults was created on January 23rd and only lasted for less than a few days until the owner of the account decided to take it down. It mainly directed insults towards the juniors, which led people to believe that it was in fact a junior. Mr. Marble followed this account in order to see who the insults were directed to and to actually find out who was behind it. It is still unknown at this point who the creator of the account was, but what is known is that the account created drama and debate over Twitter on who was behind the account. “I think Sturgis Problems is a funny way to complain about our school, and I think Sturgis Insults was juvenile and deserved to be taken down,” said freshman Chris Neuman.

On the other hand, Sturgis Problems has become a fairly common Twitter account, and a number of students are associated with it. People who use the hashtag: #sturgisproblems are often complaining about the school and stating issues that students face at Sturgis on a daily basis. This ranges from loss of power, the frigid environment in the school and the number of assignments that students receive in the I.B. Since, this is limited to the lives of only Sturgis students, it does allow students reading the tweet relate to the issue at hand. Although this is a way for Sturgis students to convey their opinions and agree upon what they think, it can also earn a bad reputation for Sturgis. Other schools will start to view Sturgis in a negative manner and gain a misunderstanding of what the school is really about. In the end it seems as though authoritative action is not being taken against the account of Sturgis Problems and that it is here to stay whether for good or bad. “I think Sturgis Problems is funny because most of the tweets are actual problems we have, like the third stall in the girl bathroom, but a Sturgis Insults is not an okay twitter account to make; us Sturgis students get enough insults just being from Sturgis, we don’t need our own peers insulting us as well.” said Sturgis sophomore Katie Roderick.

This brings up the question at hand of why students are suddenly approaching social networking all of a sudden instead of using other conventional high school methods? With social networking, a person or a group of people can distribute information to an audience with much more ease than having it go from person to person in a school. It is more convenient for the person or collection of people creating these accounts and its keeps them unidentified and out of problems with school administrators. It seems as though students at Sturgis have successfully turned away from preceding methods and have learned how implement social networks to gain attention.