Turning on the computer, you are first met with the lock screen. Then you have to enter  your user name and password. This past year, the Plainwell School district completely changed to login. They may have their reasons, but most students don’t seem to agree.

“This summer we became part of the Kalamazoo Regional Educational Services Association (KRESA). We are one of 20 schools that belong to the consortium.  Being a part of the consortium allows us to be part of a bigger organization with many benefits for us,” said Technology Coordinator Sue Root.

“Because we became part of that consortium and the people at KRESA create the user names and passwords, we had to move to their user account naming convention,” said Root.

When it came to making the passwords and usernames the school did not get to decide; instead the KRESA decided what it would be.

“Because we are 1 of 20 schools, we had to have a number associated with us. Adding the number at the front of the name makes it unique in a very large pool of user names,” said Root about the usernames.

So the number that we have in front of the usernames which is 15 has a bigger reason. That’s because out of the twenty schools there might be two different people with the same first and last name.

Now what about the passwords that they chose for the students?

“The password comes from two lists of random four letter words and two digit numbers that are randomly chosen and merged.  They chose four letter words to make it easier for the younger students to be able to remember their password,” said Root.

So they have good reasons for switching it up, but that doesn’t seem to matter to the students.

“No, I think it is stupid,” said Jason Brand ‘21.

”I think that the new username change was unnecessary. I understand why they changed the passwords,” said Maria Mathews ‘20.

We will never know if it was            

“I would choose the usernames and passwords we used to have,” said Brand.

“I think that I would have kept the old emails but had the passwords changed somehow,” said Mathews.

If you’re worried about security with the new passwords, it actually might have been improved.

”I think that they have improved security temporarily. Like with the ID Numbers some passwords are just easy to remember,” said Mathews.

“I do believe student accounts are safer with these passwords.  While the previously used student IDs were supposed to be private and confidential, it wasn’t that hard to find out somebody’s student ID,” said Root.