Online Bullies Pull Schools Into the Fray

[no_hypocrisy]

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, N.J.

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, Mr. 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 Center, an organization 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.




http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/28/style/28bully.html?pagewanted=1&hp&adxnnlx=1277690408-UODZj1qNw560cyl267dDRw

[SunnySong]

1. Nothing awkward about calling the boy's father... Certainly a better solution than the school.

[Skittles]

2. too awkward to contact the boy's family?

because the fathers coach sports together? WTF?

[Fumesucker]

4. Mark this day on your calendar, Skittles..

You and I agree on something..

:wtf: indeed..

[Skittles]

5. my dad would have kicked ass

OMG I cannot even imagine

[SheilaT]

3. They want the school to step in

over something that happened outside of school time and not on school property? They fathers coach together and the girl's dad can't speak up to the boy's dad? THAT'S why bullying is so pervasive. The parents are too cowardly to confront the other parents. Jeez.

Many years ago my older son was subject to bullying. After one particular incident my husband went over to the child's house and talked with the parents about what had happened. The parents were (and I think genuinely) horrified to discover what had happened. On the way out, my husband smiled at the son and said something like, "And I don't want to hear that there are any repercussions from this for our son at school." The kids were in sixth grade at the time. There were, so far as I know, no additional repercussions from that incident, and the bullying did, in fact, decrease. It probably helped a lot that it was handled one-on-one through the parents. The bullying kid was subject to public humiliation, and so had no real good reason to retaliate.

Admittedly, this was far different from the situation in the original post.

[proud2BlibKansan]

6. Happens a lot

Parents want the school to take care of all kinds of problems that don't happen during the school day. It's frustrating but I have always taken it as a compliment or a sign of respect for the influence the school has in our children's lives.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

7. Schools need to stay out of this kind of thing...its beyond their purview

Even if its a "myschoolsucks" website with negative comments about teachers and staff. Off campus is out of bounds.

[Catshrink]

9. And it isn't on "the test"

I agree with you.

Fumesucker agrees with Skittles, I'm agreeing with you. This is an historic day on DU.

[bluestateguy]

8. Tough for the school to handle

IF the bullies used school computers to post the threats then they might have grounds for action.

If threats of violence were made, then a school could and should act to protect the victim, seeing as how the students are likely to cross paths in the same school building.

[knitter4democracy]

10. Really, all they can do is keep an eye out for anything in class.

Make sure the teachers know, make sure the principal will keep an eye out in the cafeteria, and that's really all that they can do.

We run into this at my school all the time, and that's about all we can do. We make sure nothing happens at school, but we can't do much outside of school, sadly.