Games in High School?

Joe Griego of Bishop Union High School, CA asks: "I'm the Director of I.T. for a small school district, and we've implemented a 'Game Night' for our kids. We open the lab once or twice a month, and let the kids sign up for the lab computers (we have 34 of them), and play LAN games until the wee hours. It's a lot of fun for the kids, and I enjoy seeing them use the computers for recreation, as opposed to purely academic purposes. However, my question would be - do other high schools even do this?" Judging by the post-Columbine reactions from the government, parent's groups, school systems, and the media, if a school is doing this, it's probably on the QT. Personally, I think this is a great idea, it keeps kids off of the streets and their parents know where they are. What do you think?

"I'd like to know what sorts of games would be best for this activity? We play Age of Empires II, Starcraft/Broodwar, and MechWarrior IV. I would have liked to include first person shooters (for the gameplay), but I'm limited by parental concerns, and perceptions in the community. As a school administrator and parent, I understand these concerns in a way the kids perhaps do not.

Are there other games that would be suitable for a school sponsored event? I'd love to hear about experiences at other schools."

Comments

kids off the streets

[mblase]

Personally, I think this is a great idea, it keeps kids off of the streets and their parents know where they are. What do you think?

Here in Peoria, IL, we had a dance club for teens called Revelations -- up until last year. The name isn't suggestive; the owners were Christians and their motive in providing the club was exactly that. Dancing, peers, and no alcohol even available. But the community had concerns about adults being allowed in and dancing with teens, as well as the subtle nuances of curfew violations for different age brackets.

Eventually the place closed, although this year a different group of Christians -- teenagers, this time -- organized a replacement called Club Saturn. It takes place in a building on the riverfront intended for private group meetings once a month, charges admission to cover the cost of renting the place, and has plenty of chaperones on duty to make sure the dancing isn't too lewd and that nothing unconscionable happens on location. Curfews are enforced.

Nevertheless, the city had a bone to pick with them, too -- this time about the money issue. It seems to be cleared up, at least for now, and Club Saturn continues.

However, it makes me wonder if there's a general stigma about teens in this city having any kind of publicly-advertised party. I'm not even sure it's parents of the kids involved that are concerned; it's probably parents and adults without interested kids who make the noise. Then again, that's just the way people are.

My point here is that if you want to have a LAN-party club at a high school, you'll probably have to observe a few rules:

• No "until the wee hours" business, not even on Fridays when there's no homework to worry about. You'll almost certainly have to observe curfews where teenagers are concerned.

• Pick any games you like, bloody or otherwise -- as long as they're not rated M-17. Turn on the "no gore" controls for the sake of the parents. Advertise that you're doing this.

• Encourage the kids to form a club for this sort of thing, and hand management and promotion of it over to them next year if it's a hit. Let them nominate games they'd like to play. If they can bring their own copies of the game, so much the better. You'll have per-copy licensing issues, obviously, and you'll have a tough time explaining twenty $50-copies of Civ III to the school board.

• Free pizza and pop. Duh.

• Allow and even encourage parents to drop by and see what games are being played. All the posters and reassurances in the world won't substitute for letting parents see what's going on themselves. And how could the kids object? They'll be engrossed in the screen all the time, anyways. Make this a policy for every meeting, student-run or not.

• Keep a sign-in sheet for kids, and require student IDs to be shown (for proof, and so that kids don't bring random friends to school labs). Police the game room and keep "trouble" students from coming back.

• Don't forget to set things up so you can wipe the computers clean afterwards and reinstall a Ghost of all the software when you're done. (Hopefully the lab does this anyways.) Do not, ever, trust those kids not to put sneaky crap on the machines.

The best way to avoid any "Columbine" concerns is to keep it open to parents, monitored by adults, and free of profanity and virtual blood. You'll probably still catch flak, but at least you'll be able to deflect it.

Re:Inappropriate

[unicron]

Yes, but maybe they're not into sports. Maybe the school should actually make an effort to cater to what they like instead of telling them what group activities the school feels they should do.

Your's is the same mentality that led to Columbine. We a have a generation of educated, talented children that are being told if they can't dunk or throw and 80 yard pass they aren't worth shit in high school. The people that will one day run everything are the nerds and geeks of high schools today, and the star high school athletes will be the guy installing my pool or re-shingling my roof in 10 years.

I for one, harbor a deep hatred towards the way schools treat atheletes vs. the way they treat scholars. When I was in high school, I was using a 15 year old math book and then went to assemblies where all the cheerleaders had new uniforms. The chemistry equipment was so old that the reminents of 1000 past experiments were stuck to beakers, leading to some rather bad, unforseen chemical reactions. But what do you know? They just installed new tennis courts and an olympic swimming pool..good for them.

Re:Inappropriate

[codexus]

So go and chess aren't addictive games? Funny, cause some people spend their life playing them.

All games are addictive. "Having fun" is addictive. Should everything that is addictive be considered bad? What would be left? Even work is addictive to some people.

we did this at my high school my first two years

[madmancarman]

My first two years of teaching, we had a group of kids who loved Quake, Quake II (especially Action Quake), and Half-Life (especially with the Opposing Forces add-on and, to a lesser degree, Counter-Strike). My first year (1998-1999), we let them play in our Writing & Research Center, which is a general-purpose computer lab with MS Office and internet access on about 20 P/166's and 5 P/233's at the time. Needless to say, Quake II only ran well on the 233's, so the kids would try to get there quickly after school to snag a good computer. I used to play them from time to time, and even though I can hold my own at fps's, they loved it when they "0wn3d" the teacher. They even pooled money together to buy a legit copy of Quake II to run as a server (because I wouldn't let them run pirated software on our computers - they brought in their own legit licenses). It was a great way for kids who were otherwise social rejects to get together and have a good time.

After Columbine in April 1999 (I think), we quietly put a stop to the games for the rest of the school year, and the kids were surprisingly understanding. They really didn't protest much, and a couple of them really agreed with us putting a hold on it, because a number of these guys fit the Trenchcoat Mafia profile, if you know what I mean.

That May, we passed a $40M bond issue and immediately upgraded that computer lab to 40 Dell P3/450's running NT with 128 megs of ram. Of course, we didn't get the machines until June, but it was a pretty high priority to the district to get that lab up and running so they could show it off to the taxpayers (smart idea). Instead of hiring some consultants to come in and set up the lab, and instead of doing everything with my dad (who's the building tech coordinator), we contacted these kids over the summer and told them the machines were in. About five of them showed up at nine in the morning (which is a serious accomplishment for any male high school geek in the summer) and spent the next two days setting up machines, throwing away packaging, illegally dumping cardboard in nearby recycling containers... willing to work their asses off because they knew, when the lab was set up, they were going to have an unbelieveable LAN party on machines that were (at the time) much better than anything they had seen before. And we did, and it was great.

What we (my dad and I) realized is that not only can high school students have incredible technical abilities (which we already knew), but many of them are willing to bust ass for the benefit of the school if they have some sort of ownership in the situation. Our school's tech support is largely done by students from my tech classes during periods when they'd normally have study hall, and not only do we save unbelievable amounts of money (we have over 600 PC's running the whole variety of Windows - our tech support issues are constant and almost overwhelming), but the kids who are doing the work are learning skills they can actually use at home and quite possibly in a job some day.

So, to get back to the original question - I would recommend making sure that if you let these kids play games, get some work out of them in return! The best way to justify letting them play games is to tell your critics, "Hey, I'm letting these kids play Unreal Tournament because they spent the last week fixing machines and installing software for us, and that saved the district time and money." If you play it off as a reward, you can do a lot for those kids (our principal at the time bought a new motherboard for the kid who programmed our attendance system) and few people will complain. Also, always get the blessing of your principal before you do anything, and you might want to consider having another teacher or even a parent chaperone around so you don't get accused of being a pedophile trying to keep young boys at the high school until the wee hours of the evening.

Incidentally, we tried to put together a Quake II tournament in our high school two years ago where the kids would have to pay a couple bucks, and half the money would go to the winner while the other half would be used to purchase new equipment, but we couldn't get enough kids that were willing to put up the money (like $5), and a couple higher-ups balked at the idea of students participating in a "deathmatch" tournament. So, it didn't happen, but I bet I could have pulled off a StarCraft tournament this year if I'd had time.

First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. -- Gandhi