As Iowa State students, we are able to go on-line from any computer on campus, and we take for granted that we have unlimited access to connect with any Internet site we wish.

How would you feel if you went to look up a Web page and found that it had been blocked because someone decided the material was inappropriate or indecent? This would make most of us feel as though we were being treated as children, but taxpayers are starting to wonder why their money is going to fund uncensored Internet access for students.

Who gets to decide what is inappropriate? The government.

There has been discussion about the material on the Internet and what our Constitutional rights are since 1995.

Most of the laws that have been passed regarding Internet access are aimed at protecting minors, but as college students, we no longer need to be protected.

We use computers to look up everything from phone numbers to scientific research. Someone could consider much of the information we look up to be indecent. If censors in the past had their way, art, music and literature by the greatest minds would have been eliminated due to its content.

Taxpayers feel that if students can view inappropriate material on the Internet, they are not going to concentrate on looking up educational material.

If the taxpayers had their way, we probably wouldn’t ever get a choice in what we see.

Megan Sunderlage

Freshman

Agriculture business