Many schools these days either allow or even require students to have a laptop or tablet in order to do their work.

What would you do if your school let you bring a laptop to school but would not let you plug it in to charge the battery?

That is the situation that the student in this story was in, so he decided to make a petition to try to get that rule changed.

The principal was not at all happy with the petition, but he complied with all of the changed requests and doubled down with another way of charging his laptop.

Let’s read all about it.

Not allowed to use school power points? Lets bring in a generator.

PR- Principal

DEPT- Deputy Principal

HOD – Head of Department for IT

TG- Tech Guy at our school

Me- Me

Ok, let’s get to the story.

So, I am in Grade 8 and our school has a BYOD Policy where we can use our laptops instead of books in class.

Now here is the deal, at the start of this year there was a new policy introduced that would not let us charge our laptops at school.

The policy said something along the lines of… ‘students are not allowed to use school power points to charge any personal devices’.

So, I was not the only one in the class annoyed at the policy, as most peoples laptops die in class and they then get punished for their laptop dying. So, it was only a matter of time until someone did something.

Nothing wrong with trying to get policies to change, even at school.

I was hanging around with my friends at the TG’s Room (I know him fairly well) and I decided to make a change.org petition to get the policy lifted.

I went home and that night I typed out a 10,000 word article on how the policy disadvantages most students and how the risks that it is “supposed” to prevent are not dangerous.

Not a bad start to the petition. It is always interesting to see what types of things will get popular online.

One of my other friends is fairly influential and has around 6.3k followers on Instagram. So, I got home and asked him to spread the petition link.

At around 10pm that night we had a solid 300 signatures (the school has around 900 people attending).

I was pretty excited to get to school.

I walk into class, with my fully charged laptop ready to procrastinate doing my work.

Ok, some people like to be rule followers more than others.

It was first period and it was about 5 minutes to lunch and another one of the tech guys (who I knew but was more rule abiding and strict then the other TG).

He was about 5″5 and had a long ginger beard (this isnt relevant, he is just like a lumberjack).

I wonder what it is that the tech guy wants.

So he comes in and asks for me and another friend (who helped make the change.org). So I walk with him and we go straight into the deputies office. There was about 4 of us,

F1- My Croatian friend who helped me the most

F2- Another friend more american

F3- My slightly Indian friend

Let’s see if they are able to get things changed.

DEPT: Do you know why I have brought you in here?

Me: Yes, its about the petition

DEPT: evil grin comes across face So do you 3 know why you’re here

Come on, just get to the point, sir.

F1: Yes, I helped him a bit

F2: No

F3: No

DEPT Asks F2 and F3 to come over and look at her screen

Why is this even a problem? If anything, a school should encourage kids to become active in trying to advocate for change.

It was painful watching her sort through emails for 5 minutes trying to find a screenshot someone sent her.

DEPT: Were you aware that he put your name on the petition?

F2: No

F3: No says to me

He shouldn’t be putting people’s names on something without telling them first.

F3 (to me): Why did you put my name on it?

Basically because I made the petition I wanted to get my friends out of trouble. So I got them out of trouble and they went back to period 2.

Now at this point I am waiting for PR to get out of a meeting so she could speak to me about it.

They are just making him wait around and waste time.

I ended up waiting for around 90 minutes for her to talk to me and this goes down!

PR: Why did you put this petition up?

His reasons are obvious if you read the petition.

Me: Because I wanted to change the no char- (cuts me off)

PR: You realise there are better ways of doing that?

Me: I know that, I have tried but no one listened.

If the policy hadn’t been in place, he wouldn’t have had to make the petition.

PR: Ok, well you didnt need to make the petition.

PR: I have been receiving SPAM emails about the petition

The student can’t be held responsible for what people online do.

She shows me about 60 emails of people spamming her about the petition

Me: I made the petition to show wh- (cuts me off)

PR: You want to know why I took so long?

Me: Why?

Ok, this is clearly becoming a serious issue for the school.

PR: I had to speak to our legal team!

I was confused.

PR: You are not allowed to use mine and HOD’s emails and names; our PRIVATE information

It’s a fine line. At a minimum, posting people’s email addresses like this is frowned upon.

Me: Its not private, anyone can see it

PR: Stop being a smart alec

Yeah, I am sure the school logo is protected somehow.

PR: You are also not allowed to use the school logo on your petition.

PR: I will be checking tomorrow to see if this has been deleted, otherwise I will be speaking to your parents.

PR: Also you are saying all of this without reading the rules. You are allowed to charge during breaks and before and after school.

IDEA!!!

Apparently, this kid still wants to keep the petition up, but doesn’t want to get in trouble.

I already knew that you couldnt delete petitions, but what if I fixed up the petition to follow the rules.

So, what I did, I redacted and censored all the information, I sent out a reminder saying that we were “being censored, and are still working on making a difference”.

Around 2 days go by and nothing. She doesnt complain. I dont complain.

I go down to the library, to charge at break.

Yup, except they can at breaks. Sometimes. It is all very confusing.

Long story short, the librarian kicks me out for charging.

I argue that PR told me we could charge. But that doesnt go anywhere.

Now this is where the good part comes in. The rules say that we arent allowed to use the school power points to charge.

THE REVENGE

Ok, sometimes a good department head doesn’t need to be a subject matter expert.

It had been a full week and we had the same class. Note that the HOD for IT is a 70 year old woman that doesnt know what Alt+Tab is.

I heard from TG that they are only hiring her because of budget cuts because she was already a Head of Department for maths, they didn’t have to pay her more to be head for IT.

Anyways, I buy a generator online that is noisy but not enough to be considered noise pollution, but is still annoying.

I have HOD for first period. The classroom is on the same level in the same block as TG’s room. I take the generator up there and keep it at TG’s room. I take my laptop to his place saying that “my trackpad isnt working” (I had just disabled it).

Obviously, they can’t run a generator in a classroom. The fumes would be very dangerous.

I walk into the class wheeling a generator and my friend just cracks up laughing.

HOD is mad and tells me to “get out” and we argue that I am not doing anything wrong.

She gives up. You can slowly see her breaking during the lesson, getting more upset. My laptop was at 100%. I was happy. I didn’t care.

Coincidentally 3 days later, the policy get lifted and we are allowed to freely charge.

While the story is funny, it isn’t likely that it is completely true. There is no way that they would let him run a generator in a classroom. That would not only be annoying, but it would also be illegal.

If you enjoyed this post, check out this story about a teen who has spent a decade raising her younger siblings, and thinks it’s time to walk away from her family for good.

Let’s see what the people in the comments on Reddit have to say about the story.

They are called different things in different countries, I’m sure.

This is a key point that the student missed when writing the story. There is no way he could use a generator inside.

Admittedly, the school policy would make it difficult to use devices.

I was confused about this at first as well.

I find it very hard to believe that the school would even let him bring it in the building.

This student seems to be taking some liberties with the truth when it comes to telling the story. In reality, I wonder if the school had good reasons for those rules. Having a classroom full of students fighting over electrical outlets would be distracting.