Bill on 'cyber-bullying' gets mixed response
Toolbox
By Peter Hirschfeld Vermont Press Bureau - Published: February 6, 2010
MONTPELIER – In an attempt to mitigate the corrosive effects of so-called "cyber-bullying," lawmakers this year will consider a bill that would expand schools' authority to discipline their students for conduct that occurs off school grounds.
The proposed legislation – recommended by a legislative study committee appointed to examine the issue – would extend administrators' reach beyond the school classroom and grounds. While educators say the measure will help preserve the integrity of the learning environment, civil-rights experts say the law vests schools with the kind of authority more appropriately left for parents. And the vague language in the bill, according to Allen Gilbert of the Vermont-ACLU, has the potential to unduly restrict the free-speech rights of students.
"Generally, disciplining children for misconduct is the responsibility of parents, and when a child is in school, that responsibility is temporarily given to school as a necessary transfer of authority to maintain school order," Gilbert says. "But when the conduct is taking place outside the school, the presumption is that the parents will be responsible for discipline."
Gilbert isn't opposed to school intervention in instances when the off-school conduct "substantially interferes" with another students' rights to access educational programs. But the proposed legislation allows schools to intervene in cases where one student's behavior creates an "intimidating, hostile or offensive environment." That kind of broad language, Gilbert says, has the potential to capture correspondence that might deserve First Amendment protection. Schools already have the authority to intervene when off-campus behavior threatens the welfare of the school or its students.
"I can't imagine a situation where a principal has to determine, objectively, what is or isn't 'intimidating, hostile or offensive,'" Gilbert says. "It depends to a large extent on the subjective feelings of the people who are bullying or being bullied."
The proposed law comes against a backdrop of highly-publicized cases of school bullying which is being blamed at least in part for the suicide of teens. The most recent was last month in Massachusetts, where a freshman at South Hadley High School is thought to have killed herself after enduring harassment by her classmates at school and online. The incidents have brought into focus the varied responses of schools to reports of bullying.
Ken Page, executive director of the Vermont Principals Association, says school administrators already are dealing with the consequences of cyber-bullying away from school, which is often perpetrated on social networking sites like Facebook or through cell phones and instant-messaging accounts. The law, Page says, simply offers them a new tool with which to combat the destructive behavior.
"You do have to deal with it and you want to deal with it because it affects learning," says Page, who served as principal at Crossett Brook Middle School in Duxbury before heading up the VPA.
Page recalls long Mondays at school dealing with the fallout of weekend grudge matches often conducted via the Internet.
"The kid comes in with his head held low," Page says. "The job of the educator is to keep the focus on what they're doing in school. And this just gives principals a few more tools."
Page doesn't think discipline will solve the problem. He says educational efforts already under way at schools across the state – including assemblies and workshops on the consequences of cyber-bullying – are far more effective at reining in untoward behavior.
Still, as a generation of students grows up on the leading edge of a new digital frontier, Page says, schools and elected officials need to revise policies accordingly.
"I think this is just a reflection of the times," Page says.
Gilbert says he worries about schools' capacity to absorb the new responsibility. Vermont already has laws that prohibit the malicious misuse of the Internet, cell phones and other electronic media. But few cases are ever prosecuted under those laws, according to Gilbert, because they're extraordinarily difficult to investigate.
"So now what we're going to do is take this issue of cyber-bullying, which is hard for law enforcement to deal with, and turn it over to school administrators who are not trained to deal with forensic issues and investigations," Gilbert says.
The legislation could prove a legal liability for schools, Gilbert says, in cases where parents want them to intervene in out-of-school conflicts. The law doesn't force schools to assume the new responsibility, rather it allows them the option to. That legal parsing, Gilbert says, likely won't appease distraught parents looking for someone to put a stop to their child's social problems.
"I think if this law were passed, and there were litigation, this law would indicate that the school had the opportunity to respond to a situation and did not, and could potentially be held liable," Gilbert says.
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