The Spoke reviews holiday gift options. See p. 12-13
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CONESTOGA HIGH SCHOOL, BERWYN, PA
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enior Meredith Hart* was only a sophomore when she stumbled upon nude images that an Internet user took of her on Omegle, a video chatting website, when she was just 13 years old. As her world crashed down and her peers ostracized her, Hart cringed at the thought of the one minute that altered the rest of her high school career. Hart said that the pedophile impersonated a celebrity and she posed nude for him, unaware that he was taking pictures of her. About a year later, Hart searched her name on Google and found the pictures. Her parents contacted the police to try to take them off the Internet, but the pictures were later found by another student. News of the photos spread across the school and her classmates’ taunts eventually became so severe that she said she needed a security guard to accompany her to classes. Hart said she began attending a boarding school at the beginning of her junior year, where she could get a fresh start and rebuild her reputation. “Right now, I kind of learned that it’s not far in my past, but it’s far enough in my past that I can explain it to people and say that I’ve learned from it,” Hart said. “As I’m going off to college and everything, I just hope that it doesn’t come back, because that really does affect your reputation. And I’m trying really hard to get a good reputation back and it’s pretty much impossible.” Hart said she wishes she had reconsidered the situation before posing in front of her webcam. “If you think something doesn’t seem right, don’t do it,” Hart said. “Even if you have that slightest idea, because normally it will turn out in some kind of negative way. [Even though] it’s just a chance, it’s not really a risk that you want to take.” Dr. Rob D’Ovidio, a professor of Criminal Justice at Drexel University, explained that any person who receives a nude picture of a minor can be legally responsible. “It becomes incumbent upon [the individual] to notify the authorities in their school or preferably law enforcement, or preferably both, actually, that someone has sent them a text message or an email message with a picture of a naked minor or any type of pornography,” D’Ovidio said.
See SEXTING, p. 4
VOLUME 63 NO. 3
DECEMBER 19, 2012
STOGANEWS.COM
WORLD WIDE WATCH By Jenna Spoont & Suproteem Sarkar Managing Editor & Convergence Editor As technology becomes an integral part of the lives of teenagers, The Spoke investigates how students perform illicit acts, operate under an impression of privacy and recover from public scandals that involve technology and social media.
Karolis Panavas/The SPOKE
*To protect the privacy of the students interviewed, their names have been changed.