Deccan Herald Jul 1, 2010
Schools are confronted with complex questions on how to deal with online harassment of children Cyberbullying complicates teens' social lives
Jan Hoffman
The girl's parents, wild with outrage and fear, showed the principal the text messages: a dozen shocking, sexually explicit threats, sent to their daughter the previous Saturday night from the cellphone of a 12-year-old boy. Both children were sixth graders at Benjamin Franklin
Middle School in Ridgewood, New Jersey.
Punish him, insisted the parents. "I said, 'This occurred out of school, on a weekend'," recalled the principal, Tony Orsini. "We can't discipline him."
Had they contacted the boy's family, he asked. Too awkward, they replied. The fathers coach sports together. What about the police, Orsini asked. A criminal investigation would be protracted, the parents had decided, its outcome uncertain. They wanted immediate action.
They pleaded: "Help us."
Schools these days are confronted with complex questions on whether and how to deal with cyberbullying, an imprecise label for online activities ranging from barrages of teasing texts to sexually harassing group sites. The extent of the phenomenon is hard to quantify. But one 2010 study by the Cyberbullying Research Centre, an organisation founded by two criminologist who defined bullying as "willful and repeated harm" inflicted through phones and computers, said one in five middle-school students had been affected.
Affronted by cyberspace's escalation of adolescent viciousness, many parents are looking to schools for justice, protection, even revenge.
But many educators feel unprepared or unwilling to be prosecutors and judges.
Often, school district discipline codes say little about educators' authority over student cellphones, home computers and off-campus speech. Reluctant to assert an authority they are not sure they have, educators can appear indifferent to parents frantic with worry, alarmed by recent adolescent suicides linked to bullying.
Whether resolving such conflicts should be the responsibility of the family, the police or the schools remains an open question, evolving along with definitions of cyberbullying itself.
Nonetheless, administrators who decide they should help their cornered students often face daunting pragmatic and legal constraints. "I have parents who thank me for getting involved," said Mike Rafferty, the middle school principal in Old Saybrook, "and parents who say, 'It didn't happen on school property, stay out of my life'."
Judges are flummoxed, too, as they wrestle with new questions about protections on student speech and school searches. Can a student be suspended for posting a video on YouTube that cruelly demeans another student? Can a principal search a cellphone, much like a locker or a backpack?
It's unclear. These issues have begun their slow climb through state and federal courts, but so far, rulings have been contradictory, and much is still to be determined.
In April, the burden of resolving these disputes had become so onerous that the principal, Orsini, sent an exasperated e-mail message to parents that made national news:
"There is absolutely NO reason for any middle school student to be part of a social networking site," he wrote. If children were attacked through sites or texting, he added, "immediately go to the police!"
That was not the response that the parents of the girl who had received the foul messages had wanted to hear.
Middle school misery
Meredith Wearley, Benjamin Franklin's seventh-grade guidance counsellor, was overwhelmed this spring by dramas created on the web:
The text spats that zapped new best friendships; secrets told in confidence, then broadcast on Facebook; bullied girls and boys, retaliating online.
Recently, between classes, several eighth-grade girls from Benjamin Franklin reflected about their cyberdramas:
"We had so many fights in seventh grade," one girl said. "None of them were face-to-face. We were too afraid. Besides, it's easier to say 'sorry' over a text."
Another concurred. "It's easier to fight online, because you feel more brave and in control," she said. "On Facebook, you can be as mean as you want."
Studies show that online harassment can begin in fourth grade. By high school, students inclined to be cruel in cyberspace are more technologically sophisticated, more capable of hiding their prints.
But that is also when older students may be more resilient:
"By high school, youths are developing more self-confidence, engaged in extracurricular activities and focusing on the future," said Sameer Hinduja, a professor at Florida Atlantic University and an author of 'Bullying Beyond the Schoolyard'. "Their identity and self-worth come from external things that don't revolve around social relationships."
But during middle school, he said, "Peer perception largely dictates their self-worth." With their erupting skin and morphing bodies, many seventh-grade students have a hard enough time just walking through the school doors. When dozens of kids vote online, which is not uncommon, about whether a student is fat or stupid or gay, the impact
can be devastating.
If the child is texting at school or has a Facebook page without permission, "and now they're being bullied on it," said Parry Aftab, executive director of WiredSafety.org, "they can't admit it to parents. The parents will take away the technology and the kids are afraid of that. Or the parents will underreact. They'll say: 'Why read
it? Just turn it off!' "
The most threatening impediment to coming forward can be the cyberbully's revenge. Graffiti on a cyberwall can't be blacked out with a Sharpie. Mindful of risks to students who report bullies, some school districts have created anonymous tip sites. At Benjamin Franklin, the staff has many ways to give students cover.
Tony Orsini, the Ridgewood principal, learned about a devastating Facebook group last November, two months after it started. "I had a 45-year-old father crying in my office," Orsini said. "He kept asking, 'Why would someone do this to my son?' "
A Facebook page had sprung up about the man's son, who was new in town. The comments included ethnic slurs, snickers about his sexuality and an excruciating nickname. In short order, nearly 50 children piled
on, many of them readily identifiable. "Kids deal with meanness all the time and many can handle it," said Orsini, 38, a father of two children. "But it never lasts as long as it does now, online."
When the mother of a seventh-grade boy in Fairfax County, who requested anonymity to protect her son's identity, sent his principal the savage e-mail messages and Facebook jeers that six boys posted about her son, the principal wrote back that although the material was unacceptable, "From a school perspective this is outside the scope of our authority and not something we can monitor or issue consequences for."
Many principals hesitate to act because school discipline codes or state laws do not define cyberbullying. But Bernard James, an education law scholar at Pepperdine University, said that administrators interpreted statutes too narrowly: "Educators are empowered to maintain safe schools," James said. "The timidity of educators in this context of emerging technology is working to the advantage of bullies."
