Schools & cyberbullying

Harassment and bullying can take on "a new and ominous tone" when it happens online, reports the Philadelphia Inquirer. Especially when online "buddies" encourage a despondent young person, such as Ryan Halligan (who reportedly found solace in the anonymity of Net communications), to commit suicide in October 2003. His dad, "an IBM manager who built his own computers, [John] Halligan, of Essex Junction, Vt., thought he knew the risks of letting his son have a computer in his bedroom. His ground rules were clear: no talking to strangers, no sharing of passwords or personal information." Those are good rules, and Ryan's case was at a terrible extreme end of online harassment. But it had one point of intersection with so many young people's encounters with strangers online: very often they don't feel people whom they only know online (have never met in person) are strangers (see "Rethinking 'stranger danger'"). Much more common is an anecdote cited further down in the Inquirer piece: "Earlier this month at Titus Elementary School in Warrington, Bucks County, sixth graders listened intently to a story about Alex, a teen in the county whose classmates created a Web site titled simply 'Reasons to Hate Alex'." The school is now taking part in a new training program on how to deal with cyberbullying, "created for schools to meet a growing demand."

In a recent story from Baton Rouge, La.-based WAFB TV, three high school students were arrested in a cyberbullying case. "A 15-year-old female student created a Web site called 'Lorangersbiggestqueer.com.' The Web site featured pictures of a 14-year-old male student. He responded with his own Web site, which investigators say included a list of students he called 'The Preps,' and poems so graphically violent, investigators say 'they crossed the line'." For more on this (and one Net-savvy school counselor's handling of IM-based harassment), see "The IM life of middle-schoolers."