<p>"The parents of an Everett, Wash., middle school student are furious after they said a school administrator forced their daughter to log onto her Facebook page so he could investigate a cyber bullying case." ...</p>
<p>Facebook: Where privacy goes to die.</p>
<p>WJBD</a> - National News - School Official Accused of Accessing Student?s Facebook Page</p>
<p>Not saying it makes anything okay, but I’m wondering why the article didn’t specifically mention the age of the student. Could it be that she’s under 13 and shouldn’t be on FB anyway?</p>
<p>Parents need to be very vigilant in teaching their children exactly what rights they have when approached by a school official. Seriously. It’s come to that. </p>
<p>It’s not FB that’s killing privacy. It’s the lackadaisical way its members use FB that’s killing privacy.</p>
<p>Happens every day at schools. Kid receives threat on FB. Kid reports it to school administrators. Student brought down, told to log in and remove the post. Discipline given. We have an official policy about bullying in our district and social media is included. (whether posted at school or not) The district has special programs for kids and parents each school year addressing the topic and I think everyone needs to be careful what they post on social media. If you wouldn’t say it to Grandma, then it shouldn’t be posted on social media… is what is cautioned. Our district policy was established as a result of cyber bullying and the suicide of a young student, which drew national attention.</p>
<p>I understand that cyber bullying is a real issue in our society, but does anyone else have a problem with the amount of time school’s use to address Facebook bullying? For reference, some middle and high schools have one administrator that deals with discipline issues, and it tends to be a full time job just addressing in house issues. Adding 24/7 monitoring of cyber bullying can make the job overwhelming.</p>
<p>Is there a line to be drawn? I guess not. We have come to believe that schools are responsible. As a parent, if my child were bullied via Facebook, I would attempt to address the issue myself before getting the school involved. But since I have never experienced this, maybe that is not feasible.</p>
<p>This happened very close to Seattle, and I’ve heard the mother of this student on the radio. The student is 14, I believe. It was not HER post, but a post by a friend of hers. And it wasn’t even a post per se, but the COMMENTS to a post by the girl. Why the principal didn’t ask the offending student to show him HER Facebook is still unclear. From what the mother said, it was because someone said someone had told them it was on THIS kid’s FB and that’s why she got dragged in. </p>
<p>The Everett School district is supposed to address bullying situation with the LEAST invasive options, and as the ACLU attorney explained it, this was the MOST invasive, and of the WRONG kid in the first place.</p>
<p>We can teach OUR kids all we want not to post things that would offend grandma, but we can’t control what friends of friends say. As the young lady at the center of all this said, “I didn’t even know what was posted. If I had known, I would have told her to take the photo down.” From what I gather it was a secret photo of a student that wasn’t complimentary and the kids were making mean comments about her. How was the girl supposed to police what friends of the girl who posted the photo said? The principal was wrong here.</p>
<p>In the Seattle area a few schools have had suicides because of cyber bullying. I think the schools don’t have a choice but to get involved. Kids are putting things on Facebook and Twitter that are terribly wrong. I agree in a perfect world, we as parents would monitor our kids and take action if needed, but it’s not a perfect world.</p>
<p>It was just mishandled. When it was discovered that this girl was not the offender, they should have stopped, and logged OUT of her Facebook account. HER account ceased to be their business. They should have called in the offending party and the PARENTS of the offending party. </p>
<p>You don’t just go rifling through the Facebook account of someone else, looking through all their friends pages, etc. without cause.</p>
<p>I’m all for squashing bullying and cyber-bullying, but I’m also for protecting individual rights. This girl did not deserve that treatment.</p>
<p>FlyMeToTheMoon- I agree with you in principle. If you can contact the offending kid’s parents and address it through them, that’s great. The problem is that it’s going to carry over to school, and the school should be notified so that they can head it off at the pass if possible. The horrible thing about cyber-bullying is it spreads SO QUICKLY. When you have a kid that has 500 friends posting something horrible about someone - it instantly blasts the whole school with the information. What once was whispering in a corner is now YELLING from the electronic mountain-top.</p>
<p>Yes, that would have made the most sense, cromette.I forgot to mention that not only did the principal force the girl to log in, he didn’t allow her to log OUT, so that when the offender was brought in, it was obvious where he had gotten the information, and now the original girl is being bullied for being a snitch. And she is afraid to go to school. So the original offense has now claimed 2 victims, one of whom had nothing to do with any of it.</p>
<p>sseamom,</p>
<p>That’s awful! We need to educate our kids on what they HAVE to do upon request and what they DON’T have to do.</p>
<p>That was an unreasonable request - logging into her FB without her parents being notified/present, and then not letting her log out. My kids would have asked that I be called immediately. </p>
<p>I always told them that if they wound up in the principle’s office for ANY REASON, I wanted an immediate phone call BEFORE they talked to the principle. Just ask politely if your mother can be notified, tell them she can respond immediately, and ask if you can be seated in the lobby until she responds. OR just ask permission to use their cell phone in the presence of the principle and call me. It shouldn’t be necessary in every instance - but look what happens. Administrators are just PEOPLE. They deal with hundreds of issues every day. Sometimes they get it right, sometimes they make mistakes. The problem is that when they make mistakes it affects our children.</p>
<p>When did we begin allowing school administrators to handle things that are the province of the parents? This is something the parents of the bullied and the bulliers should have handled themselves. Parents now seem to want to wash their hands of disciplining their children. Schools seem to think that anything that happens between two students going to the schools is their business.</p>
<p>Schools are dragged into many of these sitiations due to legalities. In the case with our school district, there was a complete electronic forensic analysis of the computer and social media contents of the teen who committed suicide, as well as an analysis of what had been reported to schools and the schools response to the bullying. Due to the letigious nature of our society, schools have no choice but to protect themselves from liability and follow the policies set forth by the school board and local or state laws. This was analyzed as a criminal case, and no charges ended up being filed. It is very black and white. To think that parents can handle this between families, is naive in this day and age. Consequences, even for first time offenders, are very cut and dry and there is no room for a learning curve for young people.</p>
<p>TatinG, most schools would LOVE to stay out of this kind of thing. Unfortunately, it isn’t confined to FB. That kind of bullying winds up on school grounds and often ends up with 20+ kids virtually terrorizing one and lots of others ridiculing and sometimes leads to suicide. If the school knows this is a possibility, they would be fools to ignore it. It can get out of control quickly.</p>
<p>The problem and taunting don’t just disappear at home behind the computer - OF COURSE it spills over into school and disrupts and is dangerous.</p>
<p>And the sad truth is that A LOT of parents simply don’t care. What is the recourse then?</p>
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<p>Unfortunately, the school is protecting themselves, because there are so many parents that are willing to sue because little Johnny’s feelings got hurt.</p>
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When parents stopped handling it themselves - when parents decided to abrogate their responsibility to see that their children are civilized people. Some parents think it’s funny that their kids post these types of things on Facebook - the same parents who were bullies themselves as children. They’re also the ones most likely to file suit against the schools. When my daughter was bullied in 5th grade, little was done about it, she was told she was overreacting. When she finally struck back, she ended up with a suspension because she scratched him, and his parents complained that she drew blood.</p>
<p>A few years back there was a high school boy and girl messaging each other on some social network. Can’t remember how I ended up seeing it, but it’s wasn’t “private”. I think my daughter showed me one of the posts, as it was a friend of a friend kind of thing. My daughter was weirded out by the conversation.</p>
<p>It was pretty nasty stuff. It wasn’t just sex talk but it also talked about abuse, ie the boy was saying sorry for hitting her, etc. why they posted it how they did I have no idea. It went back and forth and it wasn’t nice stuff. The abuse was apparent and even if it was exaggerated saying nothing was not something I could do.</p>
<p>Not knowing the people involved. And seeing this was a pretty public exchange, I printed out the pages and sent to the guidance counselor at the kids high school. </p>
<p>A few days later both their accounts were deleted and my daughter told me the two had broken up. There was talk about the postings and that other kids had shown their parents.</p>
<p>And the abuse was true.</p>
<p>"When my daughter was bullied in 5th grade, little was done about it, she was told she was overreacting. When she finally struck back, she ended up with a suspension because she scratched him, and his parents complained that she drew blood. "</p>
<p>With zero tolerance, if there is any physical retaliation, the child is suspended. Zero tolerance = lazy management.</p>
<p>We also had bullies at my daughters middle school. On bullied girl posted she wished the mean girls would just disappear. This was seen as a threat. She was called in, my daughter was too. The bullies cried and said how scared they were. Their parents acted all worried.</p>
<p>The bullied girl was suspended for three days. My daughter was scared, as this was her friend and my daughter was basically interrogated by the principal for having received the post. The mean girls then all crowed about how they were the victims.</p>
<p>They were smart enough to not post anything, but they were darn quick to report something. Still make my blood boil. And still can’t tend their parents.</p>
<p>Maybe kids don’t need to be on Facebook? I didn’t have it when growing up in the 80’s. It’s so sad that children are encouraged to derive their self-worth from this garbage.</p>
<p>GoodDegree – I agree. The difficulty with not having Facebook came when we found out that our children’s school athletic teams and clubs and church youth group had formed FB groups to publicize their events and distribute other useful information. I ended up on FB to keep track of those for my children until we let them have FB accounts (not until their senior year in high school).</p>