A new trend has weaseled its way into the lives of CCHS students forcing them to always be on guard and literally sleep with one eye open. Whether you’re taking a mid-day nap or simply trying to enjoy a romantic spaghetti date with your homie at lunch, no student is safe from the peering eyes (or phones) of other students. Instagram accounts like “caughtteating_cchs” or “caughtsleeping_cchsjc”  have begun popping up and urging students to send in photos of their fellow classmates.

Obviously, there are some concerns regarding the ethics of the Instagram pages, mostly of whether or not the parties being displayed consent to having their photo online and open public scrutiny. These concerns can be put to rest, however, seeing as the bio of many of the accounts state that they are happy to take down your picture if you are salty about the post. Some accounts have also raised some concerns about if they are appropriate for school. If you are the moderator of such an account it may benefit you to know that your account is protected under the first amendment according to the ruling in Beussink v. Woodland School District, a federal court case that took place in eastern Missouri in 1998.

Personally, I think that the accounts are actually benefitting the school. The caughtsleeping_cchsjc account discourages students from sleeping during class and cchs_clingyscouples help to turn kids away from expressing public displays off affection out in the hallways (seriously it’s a gross, please stop).

Brendan Bechtel, the face behind cchs_bathroom_nightmares gave some insight into the origin of his page stating “I started it last year actually because I wanted to show how horribly people treat our bathrooms.” After looking through his page, it is safe to say that I’m absolutely disgusted with the state of our lavatories; some of the stuff shown is just downright grotesque. After being asked if he believed his page was beneficial to the school he expressed some concern and said, “I don’t think I can say for sure, I’ve tried my best to try and stop people from purposely trashing our bathrooms to get on the page, but people will still do outrageous stuff for attention.” I’ve seen a similar trend with other accounts with people staging shots for attention however I really don’t think there’s any harm being done. Teenagers will be gross no matter what, so why not bring some attention to it?

Overall these accounts are pretty harmless, for example cchsbadparking101, but that being said please don’t vandalize the school, and denounce inappropriate and harmful posts. Take care of your school and each other.