By Erin Eagle’17, Staff Writer

It’s 11:00 am on January 8th. There’s a lot of chattering around you as you sit in class. All of a sudden, you hear the words “Netflix is banned”. You quickly turn your head and say “is that true??” At least that is what I said when I found out Netflix was banned at Newark Academy. Instagram and Facebook were understandable, but Netflix? It was hard to believe that a website so widely used by the school community would be blocked for the rest of our high school careers.

When Meghna Padmanabhan ‘17 found out, she had a slightly different reaction. She was “very upset because it was something that [she] used during [her] frees to de-stress and [she] was frustrated that Newark Academy had blocked it for no apparent reason.”

Not only were students upset when they found out the news, but, a petition was immediately created with no time to waste. Over 140 passionate students came together and signed this petition, eager for change. The idea of having no access to Netflix created chaos in the school community for a few hours.

However, the majority of the student body quickly reacted without actually knowing the story behind the “banning of Netflix”. In fact, the technology department did not ban the popular website at all.

According to the Director of Technology Mr. Kapferer and the System Administrator Mr. Ionescu, the Newark Academy technology department is constantly working to improve the reliability of the wireless connection throughout the school. After hearing some complaints about the wireless performance in the library, members of the department shifted the usual traffic management parameters to try to improve the situation for students in the library. By doing so, however, Netflix was unintentionally blocked temporarily. After realizing that students and faculty lost access to Netflix, the issue was immediately resolved.

But, is having “the right to Netflix” necessarily a good thing? For some students, it truly is a perfect opportunity to take a few minutes to minimalize stress during their chaotic school day. For others, however, Netflix is a major distraction, and it actually adds more stress later in the day when homework is not complete. Either way, most students would agree that the entire student body should have the option of Netflix, whether they use it or not.

Seen by the quick uproar of students, it is easy to note that Netflix has become a necessity. How could having “the right” to a website be so vital to our survival here at NA? Just like the “right to equality” or the “right to freedom of speech”, the “right to Netflix” has become something students took for granted.

“Now that Netflix has made its return (all in one day), distressed students quickly readjusted to their daily routine at Newark Academy, for better or worse”