BWHS Student Council leads effort against cyber-bullying

By LENNY C. LEPOLA

News Assis­tant Man­ag­ing Editor

Four Big Wal­nut High School Stu­dent Coun­cil mem­bers attended the Novem­ber Big Wal­nut Local School Dis­trict Board of Edu­ca­tion meet­ing to give a pre­sen­ta­tion on stu­dents part­ner­ing with the school dis­trict to address cyber-bullying

The four stu­dents — Nicole Meyer, Avery Kerns, Lind­sey Adams and Caeilen Lozano – said stu­dent coun­cil mem­bers and other stu­dents were cre­at­ing high school, mid­dle school, inter­me­di­ate school and ele­men­tary school pre­sen­ta­tions out­lin­ing the Jes­sica Logan act, a new Ohio law designed to help pre­vent cyber-bullying using social media.

Under man­dates of the Jes­sica Logan Act, edu­ca­tors are respon­si­ble for inves­ti­gat­ing and pros­e­cut­ing com­plaints (includ­ing anony­mous reports) of cyber-bullying, even if the mate­r­ial was cre­ated on the student’s own time, away from school groups and apart from any school-sanctioned activ­ity. This would include emails, post­ings on Face­book and other social networks.

Through­out the school day last Tues­day (Decem­ber 18), dur­ing eight ses­sions small groups of stu­dents assem­bled in the high school audi­to­rium for a brief pre­sen­ta­tion that included a video about Cincin­nati teenager Jes­sica Logan, who com­mit­ted sui­cide in 2008 because of cyber-bullying.

School dis­trict assis­tant super­in­ten­dent Gary Bar­ber said the pre­sen­ta­tions were a 100 per­cent stu­dent coun­cil designed and led effort.

“We pre­sented the issue to the high school’s stu­dent coun­cil; we told them this is what the law is ask­ing us to do,” Bar­ber explained. “They broke up into three groups for the high school, mid­dle and inter­me­di­ate schools, and an ele­men­tary group. All three groups came up with dif­fer­ent pre­sen­ta­tions. They came up with the con­cepts, designed the scripts, cre­ated the con­tent, and then they pre­sented it to the prin­ci­pals and got a thumbs-up from them.

Bar­ber said to keep pre­sen­ta­tions age appro­pri­ate and mean­ing­ful, ele­men­tary school con­tent would be geared for Kinder­garten through Grade 1, grades 2 and 3, and Grade 4, with an empha­sis on top­ics like name-calling and other anti-social behav­iors that lead to bul­ly­ing as stu­dents grow older. The inter­me­di­ate school, mid­dle school and high school pre­sen­ta­tions address student’s anti-social behav­iors on social media.

Dur­ing last Tuesday’s high school pre­sen­ta­tions, Adams, who serves as Stu­dent Coun­cil Pres­i­dent, said the Jes­sica Logan Act is not some new way for dis­trict and school build­ing admin­is­tra­tors to inter­fere with student’s social lives; that it’s a law put in place to pro­tect stu­dents from cyber-bullying.

“In today’s world we don’t just com­mu­ni­cate face to face, but through tech­nol­ogy,” Adams said. “We use tex­ting, Twit­ter, and YouTube to keep up with the world around us. These things help us in a pos­i­tive way and have rev­o­lu­tion­ized the way we inter­act, but at times they can do more harm than good.”

Adams said many of today’s stu­dents are aware of the dan­gers and impli­ca­tions of their actions on social media net­works, where even casual remarks can be mis­con­strued and misrepresented.

Dur­ing one early after­noon ses­sion, Adams, Chase LaVeer and Emi Malik had stu­dents do a sur­vey via socrative.com using their own devices – a.k.a. smart phones – with results tab­u­lated online and pro­jected on the audi­to­rium screen in real time.

The online sur­vey deter­mined that in one audi­ence alone 55 stu­dents with smart devices able to log on and par­tic­i­pate in the sur­vey had a Twit­ter, Face­book, or Insta­gram account or text capa­bil­i­ties, six stu­dents did not. 50 stu­dents said they had wit­nessed fight­ing or bul­ly­ing on social media web­sites, 17 said they had not. Only 34 stu­dents had heard of the Jes­sica Logan Act, 32 stu­dents had not.

In explain­ing the school district’s respon­si­bil­i­ties as out­lined in the Jes­sica Logan Act, Bar­ber assured stu­dents that dis­trict admin­is­tra­tors and staff are not inter­ested in keep­ing track of student’s social activ­i­ties; that they would only check social sites if a prob­lem is brought to their attention.

“We’re really proud of our stu­dents here at Big Wal­nut; they do a great job from day to day pro­vid­ing a warm and safe envi­ron­ment, mak­ing Big Wal­nut a great place to be,” Bar­ber said. “But this law is a big change for us. We’re respon­si­ble for stu­dents out­side these walls now; we’re respon­si­ble to cre­ate an anony­mous way for stu­dents to report things in an age-appropriate way, K through 12.”

Bar­ber said the other side of the Jes­sica Logan Act’s require­ments is false report­ing; that false report­ing, like cyber-bullying itself, could lead to sus­pen­sion or expulsion.

Bar­ber said to keep bul­ly­ing report­ing com­pletely anony­mous the dis­trict is pric­ing third party 24/7 school help lines to han­dle phys­i­cal calls and texts.

Stu­dents coun­cil has already pre­sented the mid­dle school ver­sion of the pre­sen­ta­tion to mid­dle school stu­dents. Pre­sen­ta­tions are sched­uled for Big Wal­nut Inter­me­di­ate School and the district’s three ele­men­tary school buildings.

Posted by Gary Henery on Dec 26 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.