Halfway through the current season, junior Ari Bruckman, a member of the boys varsity basketball team, scrolled through his Twitter feed when he saw someone retweeted a tweet from “GBN Hoops.”

“I looked at the account, and it was just a bunch of comments bashing on the [basketball] program,” Bruckman said.

Bruckman said he talked to his teammates and found out the account’s posts had been harshly criticizing the basketball team for the past two seasons.

The “GBN Hoops” account, which had a Twitter handle of “@GBNBasketball,” had been anonymously posting about the basketball team for the past three seasons. Certain tweets were directed at the coaching staff and specific players.

Junior Zach Hoffman said he saw the tweets were very opinionated and was “confused” why someone would post hateful things about the basketball team.

“We’re just kids,” said Hoffman. “We are trying our best and I don’t know what else [the person running the account] wants from us.”

Bruckman said the last thing a “struggling team” needs is to get “continuously attacked.”

According to Ryan Bretag, director of instructional technology for District 225, the district only focuses on monitoring “official” Glenbrook North social media accounts.

Karen Geddeis, director of public relations and communications for District 225, said in order to be an official Glenbrook social media account, it must be owned and operated by a Glenbrook staff member. She said the administration is provided with an official account’s username and password, and official accounts are listed on the school website. Additionally, all official district and school accounts must post a disclaimer, confirming the account is official.

“If we run into [an account] that is claiming to be official, our first efforts are…to remove any statement that links together [the account and GBN],” Bretag said.

Geddeis said the district is “really trying to differentiate” between “official and nonofficial” social media accounts.

“If [the account] is someone posing as an official [school account] and [he or she is] not, we can either ask [he or she] to refrain from doing so, or contact Twitter or Facebook directly [to remove the account],” Geddeis said.

According to Hoffman, the account’s use of “GBN” makes it appear as if it is being run from within the basketball program.

“When [someone] is representing the high school and saying [those comments] while not saying who [he or she is], it’s frustrating,” Bruckman said.

Geddeis said the title “GBN,” or anything similar to that, cannot be trademarked, and the school has no legal rights to protect it on social media.

“Anyone can really put ‘GBN’ in [an account title],” Geddeis said.

According to Geddeis, there is no way to know all the accounts that use GBN as part of the account name. She said her department searches for certain “terms” on Twitter, including “GBN,” “Glenbrook North” and “Dr. Pryma,” in order to monitor the Glenbrook brand and find media stories related to the school.

“[Our department] looks at what is out there on the Internet, and sometimes we come across these [terms],” said Geddeis. “We are certainly not sitting at our desks all day trolling for information or checking these accounts.”

Bruckman has “replied” to negative tweets from the account in the past, and he said he felt the tweets were “getting old.” He said the posts were usually negative and always seemed to portray “something that [the team] did wrong.”

Hoffman and Bruckman said they did not report the account to authorities.

“There are going to be people who hate you, who love you and want to say things about how you are playing,” said Bruckman. “Criticism is going to come one way or another…and [the account] was just something [our team] dealt with.”

The Twitter account was deleted in early February.

Bretag and Geddeis said they had no part in the deletion of the account.

Geddeis said that if an account is “causing a disruption to the school day,” then the Dean’s Office would get involved by responding to the account.

“The district [has] to be careful because freedom of speech comes into play,” said Geddeis. “Just because [the district] doesn’t like someone’s expression of social media, doesn’t mean [the district] can always take action.”

Geddeis said a tweet needs to “meet the criteria for libel and slander” before it is engaged at a higher level.

“The [biggest] problem with the account was that it [had ‘GBN’ in its name],” said Bruckman. “The fact that it was anonymously coming from [the name of] our school is just not right.”