A family friend is on the staff at Rutgers University in New Jersey where 18 year old Tyler Clementi was attending school before taking his life by jumping off the George Washington Bridge.
Clementi may have died from exposure in cyberspace. His roommate and another student, according to police reports, set up a web cam and captured Clementi in an encounter with another man. They are accused of then streaming it onto the internet.
Not only was Clementi’s privacy invaded, prosecutors speculate it drove him to commit suicide. The case has stirred the anger of tens of thousands and many are demanding tougher laws for cyber bullying, including manslaughter when it leads to suicide.
Phoebe Prince, a student in South Hadley, Massachusetts, also committed suicide earlier this year when she was reportedly cyber bullied by six students. What should the punishment be for acts like cyber bullying? The question may be as difficult to answer as the bigger issue of how to implement controls in the cyber explosive world of Facebook, Twitter and scores of other on-line vehicles.
As the debate continues to rage, it leaves challenges for the institutions themselves. Of late, I have been addressing a number of colleges and universities because of the upcoming release of my new book, “It’s the Customer, Stupid!” (John Wiley & Sons/2011). They all face similar challenges on how to deal with this dilemma.
How do the security staffs at these colleges handle this unique problem? In the Rutgers case, New Jersey prosecutors initially charged two students Dharum Ravi and Molly W. Wei with two counts each of invasion of privacy. Ravi faces two additional counts for a second unsuccessful attempt to view and transmit additional images.
What should the punishment be when online bullying leads to someone’s decision to end their life? Does this constitute a bias crime? Technology is allowing universities like the ones I’ve been addressing lately to offer virtual classrooms that help address enrollments that have skyrocketed to 125% of capacity. That’s the good news. The bad news is cyberspace has opened the doors to the bad guys as well.
The bigger question is the whole bullying thing itself? It’s nothing new. It’s been going for decades but it manifests itself differently today. I recall I was on the road giving a speech when my youngest son, Christopher (age 6 at the time), encountered a bullying problem with one of his classmates in the first grade.
When I’m on the road speaking, I always call in to check on the gang. Christopher got on the phone to tell me about his day and the first thing out of his mouth was “Jason’s been hitting me.” I immediately thought he was speaking about his older brother, Jason, so I said, “Put him on the phone right now!”
“Not that Jason,” he explained. “It was Jason at school who has been hitting me.” A different Jason required a different approach. I could correct the Jason at home, but dealing with Jason, the bully, at school was different. So I posed a question to him: “What are you going to do about it?”
“I know, we can tell the teacher,” he declared. I explained that the teacher was probably going to get on Jason’s case but it might just make him bully you more. “I know, we can tell his mother!” Again, my response was similar. “So what are you going to do about it Christopher?”
My goal was to get him to stand up for himself and let his classmate know that he was not going to be bullied. “Well you think about how you’re going to approach this and I’ll check in with you tomorrow.”
The next day, I called in and Christopher answered the phone this time. I could tell he was excited. “I solved my problem dad. I hit him with a baseball bat.” Now before you become concerned, it was a wiffle ball bat and he didn’t hurt Jason, but the kid has not bothered him since. Sometimes you have to stand up to bullies to let them know.
Fast forward to today. Christopher is an emergency room nurse and he recently was giving care to an intoxicated patient who decided to slug him. Fortunately, this time, he just called the police. Stand up to bullies and don’t take their guff.
