The Google doodle ban in West Albany High School is a hate crime against our school. Not only were these games fun, but they were easily accessible without any secret access or tricks. I remember hearing someone talk about how the schools only ban these game websites due to the malicious cookies and viruses that they download onto the school devices and servers, but I believe there’s somewhat of a deeper meaning at this point. Why would Google have malware on these games that are directly accessible through their own browser? Our school is run on Google Drive and all its other applications, so why would they even ban the games that came from the exact same company? This seems like the higher administrations just want to keep us from enjoying ourselves during our free time, utter blasphemy. According to a story from themarkup.org, school districts in the US were given these web security tools online to block students from searching pornography, but a good majority of schools use them for even the darkest of reasons. Reports say that some US school districts were banning websites about abortion, sex education, and even suicide prevention for LGBTQ+ teens. They’re using some of this technology to push these religious and political standards in schools, and this shouldn’t be okay. This kind of censorship shouldn’t be allowed by the US Constitution, because we have the right to free speech and expression, and laws that separate church and state.  The banning of these innocent Google doodle games has gone too far. I hope that we can fix this in the future as a school and community.