Cyber Bullying and Social Networks

[Dianne C. Tillman]

We have two staff who have knowledge of bullying taking place between some of our students on Facebook. Facebook and all social networking sites are blocked for students here at school, this is taking place when students access these social networking sites outside of school.
My question is, have any of you had any situations like this and if so, how were they handled?

[Stephen Lien]

First, just because Facebook is blocked is no guarantee that students didn't access Facebook via proxy sites.

Second, I've had two incidents that have involved harassment online over the years. First one was six years ago where a student sent an email was loosely viewed as a death threat. I used our DHCP, internet logs, and hotmail logs sequestered from Microsoft via an subpoena to match his login time on a particular computer to the time when that particular computer accessed hotmail to the time where he was logged into his hotmail account to the time where the email was actually sent. It all matched, but the process of procuring all those logs and organizing them took about four hours.

Second was a case of someone posting harassing comments on MySpace. Again, law enforcement got involved as per parents' request. In that case, the time-date stamps on the messages indicated that the messages were posted late at night, outside of class time. Yet, since the comments were made as part of a tit-for-tat series of harassing comments made both inside and outside of school, the school still got involved and suspended both girls for bullying.

Since these comments are being posted on Facebook, they are subject to libel laws just like any other published materials. If the administration deems it a serious enough, ongoing dilemma that needs to be addressed, law enforcement can and usually does get involved.

[Mary Mehsikomer]

In my opinion, this is part of an education process. As we move to provide some instruction for our students on Internet safety and cyberbullying, we need to talk to the students about why such behavior is inappropriate, how harmful it can be, and would they want someone to do it to them?

Even though the behavior is taking place off of school resources and outside of school, bullying is bullying. If you know who the students in question are, is there an opportunity for the school administrator to have a meeting with the parents to let them know what is going on? Is there someone who can work with the student who is being bullied and at least talk with them about how they can set the privacy settings on their own Facebook site to make sure the bullying posts do not show up on his/her own site?

One way to think about it is to think about how your school would handle a physical case of bullying and to think of it in much the same way. There are of course, limitations to what the school can do legally because it is not occuring on school property or using school resources, but if it is disrupting the students' school experience, it is appropriate for the administrator to notify the parents.

[Alice Sather]

The Dec. 2009 issue of T.H.E. Journal (also www.thejournal.com ) has an article on this issue, "Fight Fire with Fire."

As an aside, for those who contemplate letting laptops go home, issues pertinent to this are discussed in "Safe at Home" in the same issue.

[Maureen Moris]

According to my research, cyber bullying needs to be handled just like traditional bullying ... it must be addressed by the school and not ignored. The physical/mental effects of the bullying via the net is just as bad or worse than the bullies on the playground as there feels like there is no safe place. And, what is scary, is that it is not just students effected by this .. there are cases of teachers being harassed by students online, as well.

I took an online class at TIES this summer on Cyber Law. The book we used was: Cyber Law: Maximizing Safety and Minimizing Risk in Classrooms. by Aimee M. Bissonette, J.D. (she is a lawyer, teacher and writer who works in Minneapolis) ... it is a great resource (paperback about 110 pages).
Educating staff and students is a key element in dealing with this (what isn't these days) and schools need to update their policies to cover this.

For more resources try these sites:
http://www.ila.org/netsafe/
and
http://www.cyberbully411.org/

[Mary Mehsikomer]

I also recommend Aimee Bissonette's book. It has excellent information.

Maureen Moris said:

According to my research, cyber bullying needs to be handled just like traditional bullying ... it must be addressed by the school and not ignored. The physical/mental effects of the bullying via the net is just as bad or worse than the bullies on the playground as there feels like there is no safe place. And, what is scary, is that it is not just students effected by this .. there are cases of teachers being harassed by students online, as well.

I took an online class at TIES this summer on Cyber Law. The book we used was: Cyber Law: Maximizing Safety and Minimizing Risk in Classrooms. by Aimee M. Bissonette, J.D. (she is a lawyer, teacher and writer who works in Minneapolis) ... it is a great resource (paperback about 110 pages).
Educating staff and students is a key element in dealing with this (what isn't these days) and schools need to update their policies to cover this.

For more resources try these sites:
http://www.ila.org/netsafe/
and
http://www.cyberbully411.org/