News for the Week of September 16, 2007

Making youth-tech news this week is a push by school administrators and state legislators for tougher rules to combat cyberbullying.

States get tough on cyberbullying

Parents, school administrators and politicians can agree on one thing: Cyberbullying is quickly becoming the most disruptive threat to the school day. To combat the "scourge," Rhode Island is considering one of the toughest cyberbullying laws in the country, the Chicago Tribune reports. Under the proposed legislation, students and their parents could be prosecuted if the student is caught sending Internet or text messages that prove disruptive to school.

"And that includes content that they send from private computers during non-school hours," explained John Tassoni Jr., the state senator who proposed the bill. "The bottom line is that if what they are doing either from a school computer or from their own comes back to cause problems for the school, the school should be able to punish it."

Tassoni cited examples he had heard from principals of text messages or e-mails that resulted in physical altercations at school the next day, of bullying so severe students avoided school to escape it and of the case of Ryan Halligan, a 13-year-old from Vermont who committed suicide after three years of being cyberbullied over instant messaging and email.

"I think that well illustrates how serious this is becoming," Tassoni said. "Without fail, when I talk to school administrators and teachers, they overwhelmingly believe the issue of cyberbullying is one of the biggest issues in education today."

State laws and school policy may be kicking in because courts have "proved reluctant to get involved in what many may see as an age-old problem," and courts and prosecutors "have largely agreed, concluding that the 1st Amendment covers even the most offensive online speech."

Schools take action

A Texas schools superintendent said that any online behavior that detracts from learning in school is going to get school action, and his schools have detailed but one-page Internet-use contracts students have to sign.

Arlington, Texas superintendent Mac Bernd said "a number" of students have been expelled or suspended from school for breaking their computer-use contract, and students are increasingly comfortable coming forward when they are being targeted online.

In many school districts, including Arlington, computer-use contracts are not entirely new. As schools went online in recent years, they began mandating the contracts. "But initially the thought often was to protect students from outside predators — adults who use the Internet to prey on youngsters and teens. Today, much of the intent is to protect students from the barbs of one another."