Cyber- Bulling

Bullying in schools has always been a problem, and in the recent decade there has been a correlation between bullying and school shootings. On most middle and high school campuses bullying has never been something that has been tolerated for obvious reasons, and these recent connections to shootings such as the Columbine shooting nearly eight years ago have furthered lawmaker's and school officials to fight back against the bullying that goes on in America's schools. Time and data will tell us if they are making any such headway on campus, but now there is a whole new aspect of bullying that administrators need to fend off from wreaking havoc among there student body.

This is of course cyber- bullying with social networking sites becoming more and more popular by students bullying has moved into that arena, and in most cases it goes nearly unpunished and undetected by the school administrators who are slower to catch onto the new technology. Cyber- bullying is the action of posting negative and harmful messages about classmates on message boards, facebook or myspace. It is usually done in an open forum setting where most of the schools students frequently visit. It can be as damaging as being made fun of everyday during recess, and with the Internet the moment will never end as long as that posting is still there. In the most recent and severe case a video surfaced on YouTube of several girls beating up another girl while she was sitting out in her front yard. Taping there actions of course was not the smartest idea and publishing them on the Internet was even dumber because it landed the girls expelled from school and in trouble with the police.

In a school district in Ontario school administrators and lawmakers are beginning to fight the cyber- bullying battle by monitoring websites such as facebook and MySpace, but they admit it is necessary for students to help them in this movement by reporting to school officials any website where bullying exists. Hopefully Ontario can be successful and a model for how school officials and students can work together, because that is the only way school communities will be able to fully rid themselves of cyber- bullying.