Am I the only one that thinks explaining how to play an ipod through the school's sound system to a bunch of other students is a really bad practice? Maybe it's just me but if I was a theatre teacher I would never, never let my students play anything other than show-specific music on the system, and only for production reasons. Look at it this way. If your ipod is connected to the system and you happen to blow a speaker or an amp, who's head is on the chopping block?
We don't have "a bunch of other students" who know how to hook up an ipod to the board, but a few of the senior techs do know how and we do it fairly regularly, with TD approval of course. We're frequently in the theatre working for long hours, and we often plug in someone's ipod to play as background music to entertain us while we work. This is always at a low enough level so we can still easily communicate with eachother, and if we're bringing in a pipe or some other dangerous activity, we'll pause the music to make sure everyone hears the calls. I can see where you're coming from, but a sound system in a high school theatre is designed with the idea in mind that it will be used for many other purposes other than theatre sound reinforcement. What about teachers, who will sometimes play music while grading papers or check their personal emails using school computers? If a computer suddenly decided to die while they were reading an personal email, would that teacher be held liable for the entire repair/replacement cost of that computer?