Santa Cruz educators back state crackdown on bullying in cyberspace
July 22, 2011 by admin
Filed under Lingerie Events
SANTA CRUZ — State lawmakers are trying to protect students from the ridicule and harassment that can take place on social networking websites such as Facebook, MySpace and Twitter.
State Assemblywoman Nora Campos, D-San Jose, worked to increase the scope of an existing law in the California Education Code that prohibits school bullying through texts and emails.
Her bill, which expands the law to include posts made on social networking sites, was signed earlier this month.
Local school leaders applauded the latest effort to protect children from emotional abuse by classmates.
“I support anything we can do to keep kids from suffering hits to their self-esteem,” said Cynthia Hawthorne, a trustee with Santa Cruz City Schools. “The teen years are hard enough.”
Bullying through the Internet, which has led to several teen suicides in different parts of the country, has grown rapidly in the past few years with the creation of websites that allow people to collect friends, post personal pictures and announce to the world what they’re doing at that very minute.
The harmful antics include spreading rumors, sending mean messages, breaking into someone’s account and pretending to be someone else to harm another person.
Santa Cruz County schools have been confronted with incidents of malicious behavior between students online. Some cases have been serious enough to be considered misdemeanors and investigated by law enforcement.
Earlier this year, an eighth-grade girl at Aptos Junior High School lifted another girl’s photo from Facebook and created a Formspring page posing as her schoolmate.
The 14-year-old then posted sexual solicitations, making racial slurs against the victim, authorities said. The alleged victim, also an eighth-grader, was devastated.
The case was handled by sheriff’s investigators.
“Cyberbullying is really dangerous, especially at that age group. Teens have a lot of pressures to fit in,” said sheriff’s deputy April Skalland. “This is a super important law. We want to make sure it gets enforced. It’s a sign of the times.”
Efforts have been made at county schools to prevent bullying.
Aptos Junior High students launched a “Stop Bullying” campaign last year that included selling rubber wristbands for $1 each. While the effort mostly was aimed at bullying related to sexual orientation, the general message was that bullying for any reason is wrong.
Also this year, the advanced theater arts class at Soquel High School produced a play called “Be the Change,” that tackled bullying.
According to the iSafe Foundation, more than half of all teens have been bullied online, and about the same number have engaged in cyberbullying, more than 25 percent of teens have been bullied repeatedly through their cellphones or the Internet, and more than half of young people do not tell their parents when cyberbullying occurs.
The foundation is a nationwide nonprofit whose mission is to educate and empower youth to make their Internet experiences safe and responsible.
