I am a girl and I have been a teenager and I happen to know that we females don't always need a reason other than, "my boyfriend. In high schoolone girl did leave many many threatening notes in my locker because I went around "making her boyfriend look at me."

I am very worried about the trend here that I am seeing with some young people blaming the victim. It scares me to think about the future; when the people we are intrusting it to are more concerned with putting the blame for a crime on the shoulders of the victim than in finding ways to stop the perpetrators.

Well I skimmed this one too and one thing Liberty, please tell me how to deleate a website degradeing you short of hacking in and destroying it, other then emailing the owner of the domain or moderatier of where it is posted, and from what I have seen here myspace is not the most user friendly when it comes to tech support. And you can not simply stay off the net it is an important tool, also other people will see it and be infulenced by it which is very sad.
Also everyone has the right of free speech untill you step onto government property then anyone can lose their rights. and if anyone being bullied needs someone to talk to just send me an email (rasma28@gmail.com), especialy if you are contemplateing suicide, I was suicidal once and I would like to support people in that situation if they want it.

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-Rasma

Well duh... I figured that you weren't posting from school. I don't know if you're an anarchist or not... I just haven't seen any constructive suggestions from you (or the other kids) here about how to deal with Cyberbullying. I've argued that the "DON'T GO ONLINE" approach doesn't work and haven't heard back. I've suggested that you *create* a MySpace account (from home) to deal with monitoring accounts from your school. MySpace encourages this. Yeah, I can see how that might be construed as being a MySpace Narc and to that extent you could clearly be a target of others; however, that seems like something that *you* can handle.

Of course, if you don't want to do something like that, that's your choice. I'd like to help you form a MySpace club at your school, and will even talk to your admins and teachers about it. Remember, they're more likely to listen to an adult who is iSafe certified, a professional educator and knows how to deal with a lot of bureaucracy than you will in getting something like that to happen yourself. The purpose of the MySpace club will be for after school "fun" and also (secondarily in your eyes, but primary for the admin, teachers and parents) as a *safe* place for them to become involved with from home.

I can handle the safety argument (with a little support from you) and you can focus on having fun with whoever joins that group. You do have extracurricular groups at your school, right?

Dear Son of Liberty,

You're a kid... you're not even entitled to the right of free speech yet. Yup... it sucks but that's the law in schools nowadays (always has been). Indeed *that sucks* and you are more than welcome to vent your frustrations here.

However, if you're all about supporting the right of "free speech" to cyberbullies, then you obviously run up against arguments. I agree with you that DOPA is ridiculous, and that politicians and most educators don't have a clue about how to deal with situations like that. Indeed, their "just say no" answer and banning everything is ludicrous.

That being said I haven't seen where you are actively engaged in "battling the bullies." So far it seems you would rather defend their right to say *anything about anybody* rather than deal with the issue in a constructive way. Would you defend their right to libel, whether students or teachers? How about creating false MySpace pages and posing as teachers (with faked pictures showing them smoking joints and drinking beer)? See... this is the stuff that we're about here... stopping that kind of BS.

You can become a MySpace moderator and even create a MySpace group at school. That's right... fight the system from within the system. MySpace openly recruits schools and students to monitor themselves. Is there anything like that at your school? I'm guessing not. I'm also guessing that you're not interested in taking up such a role. My thinking is that by doing some constructive things with MySpace you can really "stick it to the man," do what you want to do, have fun, learn a few things, and even get credit for an assignment or two. I can help facilitate these things.

If you are indeed interested in any of the above, you can write me either here on the board or via email at jbcoops@gmail.com

Regards,

Jeff Cooper
Education Technology Support Consultant

She was targeted by a group of girls who didn't like her for whatever reason There you go. Why didn't those girls like her? What did she do?

And naive of me, I think not. I am a teen, in school. And in my school, no one bullies anyone unless they do anything. Menial things, included.

Picking on them is just a part of life, happens no matter what.

Also, did you go to the police first, or try to work things out with the bully first?

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Edited by fuzzybutton at 09/13/2006 5:09 PM

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Edited by fuzzybutton at 09/13/2006 5:13 PM

To answer your question...
She was 12 when this started. She was targeted by a group of girls who didn't like her for whatever reason. You are under the very silly impression that one has to actually DO something for people to pick on them. WOW how naive of you.
You should watch the Primetime special with Diane Sawyer tomorrow evening- it's all about mean girls and bullying.... my family is involved in the segment.
You will soon come to realize- it's not about a victim instigating a bully's action... but girls/boys intimating others who they feel they can overpower- and the internet makes it only easier to do so.
YES...
my daughter's situation was reported to the police, and we had restraining orders as well. And yes.... in time the case was settled and the bullying stopped. But I truly hope that the people who take this issue so lightly never have to go through what my child and our family had to... It is so easy to be a bystander watching from the outside- totally different when it is a loved one dealing with it firsthand.

Just to clarify...
Yes it IS easier to set up a new screen name than it is to start a new account....
but if the bully's account is on AOL... and your account is on AOL also- the instant message will go right through... it will not ask if you accept the message- that only applies if the instant messages are coming from different internet providers.
In my daughter's situation...
we and her bullies were all on AOL. Every time my daughter received a message and blocked the screen name in a matter of minutes a new screen name was created and the harassment began again.
One bully was caught because every time my daughter was harassed- she would report to AOL.... AOL suspended service to the account that housed the bully's screen name.
When the bully showed up at school that following Monday she was complaining about how her computer wasn't working because their service was suspended... my son overheard this and told the principal... since we had already gone to the school with the issue the principal notified the local authorites and after investigating- the girl came clean and admitted to what she had done.