Sadly, many people have encountered bullying. There is an awful feeling of being alone and not being able to get help. Everyone has a right to feel safe at school. An app that is new to LHS, Sprigeo, helps with that problem.

Sprigeo is a free app that students and staff can use to anonymously report bad behavior, whether it is for bullying, threats or gossip. Sprigeo has been up and running since January 15 of this year. The app is beneficial because now students do not feel as intimidated when reporting a problem. They can stay behind the safety of a screen and get help for their problems.

“I think it could lessen the problems at LHS. I think the app will make it a lot easier, instead of sitting down with someone one on one, they can just go to their computer,” senior Josh Mapel said.

With Sprigeo, anyone can report an issue and it goes straight to a principal in the form of a text on his or her phone.

“If you see a friend who is being bullied or harassed, we are able to respond to it within a couple of minutes because it actually goes to our phone and lets us know that there’s an issue,” assistant principal Brett Coffman said. “We can get right to those issues much faster than normal. It also allows parents, counselors or anybody else that’s hearing about a situation in school to place that in front of us and so we can respond that way.”

The administration is also able to tell whether this is a case of bullying or even more serious, a hate crime. They are able to see if the same acts of violence are happening to the same people.

Although the uses for Sprigeo are positive, not every student seems to know about the new app. When interviewing students of all different grades, three out of twelve students did not know what Sprigeo was. Many people however, had learned about the app during a meeting in the little theatre during advisory. During a poll most of the students said that they know of the app but have not had to use it. 25 students said that they do not know what the app is.

“I heard about Sprigeo in advisory, they told me it’s an anti-bullying app and that if there’s something going on I can report it,” freshman Raine Briscoe said. “I like the idea of it. I’ve thought about using it because I have seen some incidents around the school, but I don’t really know where to find it.”

Sprigeo can be found on the Liberty High School homepage. Some people don’t feel like they personally need the anonymous part of Sprigeo, but think it is a good thing to have.

“I think that having that feature would be good for some people who want to report something, but didn’t feel like they could tell someone,” sophomore Jacob Salas said. “It’s better to have it and not need it, than not have it and need it.”

The goal of using the app is to help better the school. No one had a way to regulate how much bullying was happening, people did not speak up as much before Sprigeo. Sprigeo is easy to use, with a few clicks a problem can be fixed.

“What I’ve noticed is that we are able to keep track of when students are feeling unsafe or when there are unkind situations happening and then we are able to have even better follow through than before,” assistant principal Bridget Herrman said. ”We’re able to communicate with parents more effectively as well. It’s a great way for the administrative and counseling team to talk more about the situations that are happening in our school. It’s raising a lot of awareness. Could I say it’s improving? I’m not sure about that, but I would say there is a larger amount of awareness going on with our students, which is excellent.”

Some reports have been made since the start of the app. The goal is to have that number drop to zero, not because students stops using Sprigeo, but because the number of threats and bullying.

“I don’t really have any [experiences with bullying]. I’ve seen some small problems in the hallway, but personally I haven’t had any,” junior Madison Bix said.