By Melanie Eiges

In February, students at Harriton High School in Pennsylvania were thrilled to receive new laptops from the school. This was until they found out they were being tracked by the web cams in the laptops that took a screenshot every 15 minutes.

The Lower Merion School Disrict received over 56,000 photos showing student’s personal lives.

The web cams were supposed to be turned on only when a laptop was reported missing, but in at least five known cases, web cams were left on even after the laptops had been found and returned.

Local investigators were not able to figure out why the students were being tracked in the first place.

In all five of the “peeping tom” cases, no charges were filed but many complaints were made.

Since the incident at Harriton, schools nationwide have considered putting tracking devices into school related items.

New Canaan High School in Connecticut is one of the schools considering the tracking devices.

The school wants to place tracking devices in all student and staff ID cards, text and library books, and laptops.

The school board is fully supportive of this experiment but students could only participate with parental consent.

Student participation is completely voluntary in this project. If enough participation is granted, the experimental tracking devices would begin roughly by spring 2011.

Incidents such as these bring up the question of whether public schools are overstepping their boundaries and violating students’ rights.

Many Cal High students would not be okay with being tracked by the school, with or without knowing it. Most said they would feel violated and not free to be themselves.

“I would feel like they are overstepping their boundaries and invading privacy,” said junior Ashely Couch. “It’s not in their jurisdiction to track me.”

Last school year in May and June, seven students were suspended because of inappropriate Facebook posts.

Many students began questioning if an administrator created a fake Facebook profile to  monitor students.

“Completely false. Trust me,” said assistant principal Damon Wright. “We are already very busy. We don’t need to [create a fake profile]. The information already comes to us.”

Wright also said he had not heard anything about the tracking devices and software coming to Cal, “but anything is possible.”