Months ago, the Cumberland School Department made the decision to disable profile pictures for all students attending the 8 public schools in the district. These schools are Community Elementary School, JJM Cumberland Hill Elementary School, Ashton Elementary School, Garvin Memorial Elementary School, Bernard F. Norton Elementary School, Joseph L. McCourt Middle School, North Cumberland Middle School, and Cumberland High School.

The reason for this decision, according to an email sent out to Cumberland High students in March, is because of "numerous inappropriate, disrespectful and the offensive selection of pictures. Additional misuse included the use of staff [and] administrators' pictures..."

The main issue with the disabling of all profile pictures is that it is collective punishment. There are thousands of students who attend school in the Cumberland School District, and of those thousands, only a fraction had abused the ability to set their own profile pictures.

Profile pictures are a way to let students express themselves. Many students had profile pictures of themselves, their friends, their families, their favorite celebrities, their favorite bands, etc. Now, everyone has the same profile picture and has had the same profile picture for months. 

We believe that it's unfair to punish everyone for something that only some students did. There are many studies out there that show that not only is collective punishment ineffective, but that it's also unfair.

A more effective approach to this situation would've been to solely punish the students who had used inappropriate profile pictures. There are several ways this could've been handled without disabling profile pictures for every single student. Administrators could've given the offenders detention, suspension, or a letter written home if the profile pictures were really that inappropriate. We believe that the disabling of profile pictures for everyone is much too nuclear of a punishment for an offense that only some students took part in.

Please sign if you also believe that the disabling of profile pictures has gone on for long enough.