Unban Esports from Volusia County Schools


Unban Esports from Volusia County Schools
The Issue
Recently, the school district of Volusia County has banned all Esports from the district, undoing years of work that were put into it to make it possible.
It all started when a screenshot of a victory screen of Overwatch (the game we played) was posted on twitter, the district didn't like the fact there was the word kill, which was seen as a stat, linking video games with violence, despite being proved by multiple cases wrong. In fact, it has been seen that video games can reduce how violent a person is. After that, they banned Esports (not just Overwatch, but any further competitions) from all schools.
Due to the ban, they jeopardized our chance of winning, we were #3 among the east coast, and had the chance to earn college scholarships. We had straight wins, just to have it all taken away from us. We were almost in the playoffs!
What is most ironic is that the school board boasts how many scholarships students earn, yet they deny us our chance to earn a scholarship.
They have recognized other sports, and they even at one time recognized Esports, but they didn't give it as much respect as other sports, and now they basically gave us a slap to the face.
This isn't the first time the school board has done something so controversial and wrong, but I hope that they can redeem themselves by doing the right thing.
Even if they refuse to fix this issue, a message can be sent by supporting this petition- a message showing that what they have done is wrong.
The Issue
Recently, the school district of Volusia County has banned all Esports from the district, undoing years of work that were put into it to make it possible.
It all started when a screenshot of a victory screen of Overwatch (the game we played) was posted on twitter, the district didn't like the fact there was the word kill, which was seen as a stat, linking video games with violence, despite being proved by multiple cases wrong. In fact, it has been seen that video games can reduce how violent a person is. After that, they banned Esports (not just Overwatch, but any further competitions) from all schools.
Due to the ban, they jeopardized our chance of winning, we were #3 among the east coast, and had the chance to earn college scholarships. We had straight wins, just to have it all taken away from us. We were almost in the playoffs!
What is most ironic is that the school board boasts how many scholarships students earn, yet they deny us our chance to earn a scholarship.
They have recognized other sports, and they even at one time recognized Esports, but they didn't give it as much respect as other sports, and now they basically gave us a slap to the face.
This isn't the first time the school board has done something so controversial and wrong, but I hope that they can redeem themselves by doing the right thing.
Even if they refuse to fix this issue, a message can be sent by supporting this petition- a message showing that what they have done is wrong.
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Petition created on October 24, 2019