By Dave Andrusko
Andrew Lampart
National Right to Life was apparently guilty of wrong-thinking—or worse- at least in the eyes of whoever controls the Dell SonicWall filter at Nonnewaug High School in Woodbury, Connecticut, which found the nation’s largest single-issue pro-life organization to be among unacceptable “Political/Advocacy Groups.”
Numerous outlets are reporting that, thanks to the investigatory work of student Andrew Lampart, we now know that at the same time NRLC was banned, NARAL Pro-Choice America and Planned Parenthood were accessible on school computers. The one-side permission slip applies to the state Democratic Party (yes), the state Republican Party (no), sites that support gun control (yes), the National Rifle Association (no).
In fact it was when the 18-year-old Lampart was doing research for a classroom debate on gun control in May that he first learned could not get on the website for the NRA and the Second Amendment Foundation’s website.
“So, I went over to the other side. And I went over on sites such as Moms Demand Action or Newtown Action Alliance and I could get on these Web sites but not the others,” Lampart told WTIC-TV, the local Fox News affiliate in Hartford. “The firewall was very one sided with what it blocked and what it was unblocking.”
Among the other organizations that were blocked were the Vatican website and website of Christianity Today.
Lampart decided to be pro-active.
He requested a meeting with the principal who referred Lampart to the superintendent.
The Daily Caller’s Blake Neff reported
“Lampart said that he approached local superintendent Jody Goegler, who told him that some political sites needed to be blocked to prevent ‘hate speech’ from seeping into the school.”
“I gave him a week to fix the problem,” Lampart told Todd Starnes, host of Fox News & Commentary. “But nothing had been done.”
Lampart then made his concerns known in a letter to the Woodbury Board of Education. The chairman, John Chapman, said, “It’s not a joking matter in terms of having access to both sides of an issue.”
In an email to WTIC-TV, Chapman wrote “the Board appreciated hearing the comments from Andrew and agree that he has raised an important issue that warrants further investigation.”
“This is really border line indoctrination,” Lampart told Starnes. “Schools are supposed to be fair and balanced towards all ways of thinking. It’s supposed to encourage students to formulate their own opinions. Students aren’t able to do that here at the school because they are only being fed one side of the issue.”
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