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Back in March I wrote about this case, where a federal jury had ordered the Hudson Area School District in Michigan to pay $800,000 in damages to a student who was repeatedly harassed by classmates (and allegedly staff) for a period of several years.  A federal district court had been reviewing the facts of the case and recently overturned the jury’s order, stating that the harassment the student experienced was not sexual in nature and therefore not subject to a Title IX claim.  This despite being called a “queer” and “faggot” on a regular basis and his locker being “covered with shaving cream spelling out sexually oriented words.”  The court also asserted that the plaintiff failed to prove that the school was deliberately indifferent to the harassment that had been taking place.

There are a couple of important lessons that can be learned from this case.  First, holding incompetent school officials accountable for their actions, or lack thereof, can be very difficult.  To be fair, we were not present during the hearings and do not have access to all of the evidence presented.  From court records, however, it seemed clear to me that school officials were ignorant at best and most likely indifferent.  Obviously Federal Circuit Judge Lawrence Zatkoff didn’t agree with me.  Please read the facts of the case here and assess for yourself.

Second, it is important that students who are bullied keep very detailed records about what happened, what they did in response, who they told, and what that person did to fix the problem.  Targets of bullying also may need to fully exhaust all school-level mechanisms for responding to the bullying.  They need to give the school a chance to make things right.  School officials too need to keep very good records pertaining to bullying incidents so that they can articulate the steps that were taken to demonstrate, as apparently the Hudson Area School District did, that they took appropriate actions to remedy the problem.

School officials cannot become complacent and assume that there is zero liability if they ignore bullying that affects their learning environment and interferes with the rights of students to feel safe at school. Our colleague Nancy Willard pointed us to a couple of examples: In Vance v. Spencer County Public School District (2000), a jury ordered the school to pay the target of student-on-student sexual harassment $220,000.  In a similar case (Theno v. Tonganoxi Unified School District, 2005), another jury ordered the school district to pay the target $250,000 for being deliberately indifferent to, once again, student-on-student sexual harassment occurring at school.  Both of these cases involved sexual harassment that occurred at school and both involved jury orders.  Common citizens could clearly see that the schools in these cases were irresponsible, indifferent, and should have done more to protect students.  Interestingly, the facts of the Theno case are very similar to the Patterson case, especially with respect to the names that the target was being called.

If we have learned anything from all of these cases, it is that this is a legal area that is far from clear.  What do you think?  Were staff members at the Hudson Area School District indifferent to the harassment?

It is imperative that everyone who works with youth, but especially law enforcement officers, stay up-to-date on the ever-evolving state and local laws concerning online behaviors, and equip themselves with the skills and knowledge to intervene as necessary. In recent survey of approximately 500 school resource officers from around the United States, we found that almost one-quarter of respondents did not know if their state had a cyberbullying law. This is surprising since their most visible responsibility involves responding to actions which are in violation of law (e.g., harassment, threats, stalking).

A couple of weeks ago, we posted a brief summary of the state laws concerning bullying and cyberbullying. At last count, 44 states had laws regarding bullying, and 30 of those included some mention of electronic forms of harassment. Almost all of these laws simply direct school districts to have a bullying and harassment policy, though few delineate the actual content of such policies. Please review this document and let us know if anything is inaccurate as we want to try to keep it as up-to-date as possible.

Some states, like Wisconsin, have both a bullying law (which recently passed) and separate statutes regulating telephones and other forms of electronic communication. Specifically, in Wisconsin it is a misdemeanor crime to threaten to “inflict injury or personal harm” through the use of e-mail or another computerized communication system. It is also illegal to harass, annoy, or otherwise offend another person electronically. Each state is different with respect to the extent that they specifically address electronic forms of harassment. Educators, parents, and  law enforcement officers need to be sure to carefully review and understand the statutes in their own state to understand the formal legal implications of participating in cyberbullying.

We’ve discussed different elements of the Phoebe Prince case a number of times on this blog. Recall that Phoebe was the 15-year-old girl who committed suicide in January after being bullied and cyberbullied. She moved to South Hadley, Massachusetts, from Ireland at the beginning of the 2009-2010 school year. Being the new girl, she had attracted the attention of some of the local boys, resulting in resentment from some of the girls at the school. As a result, several students began relentlessly bullying Phoebe until she couldn’t take it anymore. Media reports exclusively zeroed in on the bullying as the cause of Phoebe’s suicide; the teens involved were charged criminally, and the actions taken by the school prior to the suicide were scrutinized. It appeared to be another heartbreaking case of teen suicide that was caused, or at least encouraged, by experience with severe bullying.

Emily Bazelon from Slate magazine just published an in-depth, three-part investigation of the events leading up to and following Phoebe’s suicide. (You can see more articles in her series on cyberbullying here). In this inquiry Bazelon reveals many aspects of the case that hadn’t before been publicly discussed. Like many of the previous cases of teen suicide tied to bullying, there is more to the story than the simple equation: “experience with bullying=suicide.” Bazelon thoroughly details the emotional and psychological struggles and interpersonal conflict that Phoebe was dealing with: She cut herself. She was prescribed medication to help with mood swings. She first attempted suicide the day after Thanksgiving by swallowing a bottle of her pills. Her parents and the school say they were on watch. During all of this she had dated at least two of the popular boys at her new school who had recently been in relationships with other girls. These girls apparently became jealous and along with others began harassing her at school and online. It appears that the bullying was the straw that broke the proverbial camel’s back.

Of course none of this new information justifies the bullying behaviors or discounts the tragedy of incident. Phoebe did not deserve to be bullied—no one does. Without a doubt, adolescence is a challenging developmental period. We know that some teens are better able than others to deal with the challenges. Our research shows that some youth are not negatively impacted by their experiences with bullying and cyberbullying. Others, however, are very much affected, feeling angry, frustrated, depressed, and even suicidal. For example, a forthcoming paper of ours found a significant relationship between bullying/cyberbullying and suicidal thoughts and attempts, but it is important to note that experience with bullying explained less than 5% of the variation in suicidal thoughts and attempts. So there are many other influences that also need to be considered. In fact, we are not aware of a single case where experience with bullying and cyberbullying was found to be the sole cause of an adolescent suicide.

At the same time, these experiences cannot be ignored. Would Phoebe have committed suicide if she hadn’t been bullied? We have no idea of knowing the answer to that question. There is little doubt that she was tormented by some of her classmates. Those experiences, coupled with the other challenges she was working through, were a recipe for disaster. A lot of seemingly little things can quickly add up to something huge in the eyes of an adolescent. Technology can magnify these so-called “little things” by exposing the target to a wider audience and by creating a perception in the victim that the whole world is against them. It also makes it harder to escape because technology can follow a person everywhere. In the eyes of some youth there appears to be no easy way out. It is the responsibility of all of us to be there to show those who are bullied that there are other options. We understand the pain that it causes and we need to do all in our power to stop the bullying behaviors and protect the victims. We owe at least that much to Phoebe and all of the other youth who felt they only had one option.

Blue Mountain School District v. J.S. and Layshock v. Hermitage School District. These are two cases that we have discussed quite frequently on this blog.  We have been waiting a long time to receive clarification from a high court regarding the circumstances under which schools can discipline students for their off-campus online speech and we thought these two cases would provide that guidance.  As we’ve noted before, the default standard has generally been that school administrators can discipline students for off-campus behavior if it can be demonstrated that such behavior resulted in a “substantial and material disruption” of the school environment (Tinker vs. Des Moines, 1969).  One problem is this issue has never really been addressed in the digital age.  Another problem is, what constitutes a disruption of a ’substantial’ caliber is clearly in the eyes of the beholder.

Take the example of Justin Layshock, the 17-year-old Hickory High School senior who in 2005 created a “nonthreatening, non‐obscene parody profile making fun of the school principal” from his grandmother’s home using her computer.  The school suspended Layshock for 10 days, which was initially upheld in a 2006 hearing, but later overturned by the judge in the case, saying the school went too far.  Last February, a panel of judges from the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals weighed in and agreed.  In this specific case it appeared the school failed to effectively argue that Layshock’s actions caused a substantial disruption at school.

In the related case, a 14-year-old eighth-grade student from Blue Mountain Middle School also created a MySpace profile of the principal which included, among other things, an accusation that he was a “sex-obsessed pedophile.”  This student was also suspended for 10 days for violating the school’s discipline code and for using the schools copyrighted material (the principal’s picture from the school’s web site) without permission. The lower court refused to grant the student a temporary restraining order or preliminary injunction ruling that schools can in fact discipline students for lewd off-campus behavior, even if such behavior doesn’t cause a substantial disruption.  Another, separate panel from the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with the lower court in an opinion that seemed inconsistent with the Layshock ruling.

In an effort to resolve these two conflicting perspectives, the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is now revisiting both cases, by employing a 15-judge panel instead of the original separate smaller panels.  Oral arguments started today and we’ll be sure to update this post when a decision is reached.  What do you think the judges will decide?  At what point can schools take action?  At what point must they take action?

Our colleague Anne Collier from NetFamilyNews made us aware of an email that Anthony Orsini, a middle school principal from New Jersey, sent to parents a couple of weeks ago imploring them to prohibit their children from participating in social networking sites. As reported on CBS and elsewhere, the letter Orsini sent to parents included the following text:

“Please do the following: sit down with your child (and they are just children still) and tell them that they are not allowed to be a member of any social networking site. Today! … There is absolutely no reason for any middle school student to be a part of a social networking site! Let me repeat that – there is absolutely, positively no reason for any middle school student to be a part of a social networking site! None.”

Sameer and I have been exploring adolescent social networking for almost 5 years and even though we see the worst of the worst in terms of behaviors, we also agree that such examples represent the exception, not the rule.   In general, we believe the benefits of social networking outweigh the negatives and potential risks, if youth learn to use the sites responsibly. It is certainly a very good idea for parents to talk to their kids about what they are doing online, though simply banning access to technology, without just cause, is a big mistake. For one thing, it is literally impossible for parents to completely prevent their children from participating in social networking. If they really want to be on social networking sites, they will find a way to get on: they will go to a friend’s house or log on at the library or pursue underground social networking sites that are less well known or regulated.

It is a much better strategy for parents to carefully express their concerns about these environments and teach youth how to be responsible online. Tell them that it isn’t a good idea to accept as friends those who they do not know and trust in real life. Demonstrate the dangers of posting too much personal information online. Show them how to use the privacy settings. Provide them with examples from the media where teens have gotten into trouble for misusing social networks. Our research suggests that teens are listening and improving social networking practices! Print this out and give it to them. Odds are they will be just fine if they abide by these commonsense guidelines.

Then, have your kids help you set up a Facebook page and tell them that they need to be your friend. That way you can see everything they are doing on the site and you can remind them about what you talked about if they slip up. And you can send them gifts on Farmville.

It is very important that parents and others work to instill responsible practices in youth at a relatively early age – when they will still listen. Banning access is a short-term solution that will likely create additional problems in the future when teens eventually do go online and don’t have the skills necessary to responsibly navigate the World Wide Web.

By the way, as Anne points out on her blog, the same week that the New Jersey principal distributed the email encouraging parents to ban participation in Facebook, the Boston Globe reported that Obama’s pick for Teacher of the Year regularly uses Facebook in her classes. As you know, we have discussed the issue of teachers interacting with teens online in multiple posts on this blog. While I am not sure that we have come to any definitive conclusion, it is interesting to see examples from both sides of the issue come up in the news recently. What do you think: prohibit or promote the use of online social networking?