You’ve heard the phrase “it takes a village to raise a child”? When it comes to the modern issue of cyberbullying, it may take that same village to discover the problem, bring it out into the light of day and force the community to address it. There’s probably nothing quite so powerful as a group of mothers with a mission, as shown in this month’s Palo Alto cyberbullying story.
One mom blogger in the famed Silicon Valley community of Palo Alto discovered the son of a friend of hers was a target of a vicious Facebook group. This group, formed by over 100 local high school and middle school students, included vicious slurs and hate-filled language to taunt, harass and humiliate this child. When the issue was brought to the attention of the local school district, the parents were shocked to discover that the Palo Alto Unified School District lacked a cyberbullying policy to deal with the situation. The administration felt that even with recent California laws enacted to support schools dealing with on campus bullying and cyberbullying, this episode was outside their jurisdiction because all the activity occurred off school grounds.
Fortunately the mom group was able to convince the school officials to contact Facebook who quickly removed the offending page. The harm to this particular child, of course, hasn’t ended. He will always know the cruelty of the taunts he faced online in addition to whatever forms his harassers used in the school environment.
The next step for this group of committed parents will be to get a school district cyberbullying policy developed. This is a good idea for all schools, public and private. You might check with your child’s school to see if a policy currently exists. There are terrific resources out on the Internet to help draft one. Look for guidance from your local parent teacher organization, the Anti-Defamation League or organizations such as Nancy Willard’s Center for Safe and Responsible Internet Use (at www.cyberbully.org). One tip: make sure that parents and kids come together in person to the school to sign the policy, making a concrete commitment to understand and uphold the pledge to stop bullying of all forms.