Interview with Officer Jonathon Westfield - Champaign Police Department (July 21, 2011)
Q: How do you think cyberbullying is different from bullying?
A: Cyberbullying is a subcategory of bullying. It’s the buzzword right now. How old are you? (22 and 25) Okay well, 20 years ago it wasn’t around. Cyberbullying is just the medium for how it’s done. Kids aren’t adequately prepared to address bullying in any form.
Q: How can we adequately prepare students?
A: Bullying is a common problem, it’s a society issue. It’s a life-long process unfortunately. Adults don’t deal with it. Your parents didn’t deal with it. Your grandparents didn’t deal with it. We, as a society, make light of bad situations.
Q: What are the rules in a school of addressing bullying?
A: Bullying isn’t a crime; the components that go into it are. Its components can be considered a crime. The state can’t just have a cyberbullying law. Bullying covers more. People can be harassed online or on the phone or in person. You can add components and take some away, but it’s still bullying.
Q: How do we as teachers help students who are being bullied or cyber-bullied?
A: Take it for what it is. If a child says it happened, don’t minimize it. Don’t fall back on clichés like “Kids will be kids” or “that didn’t really happen.” Tell them that they need to fill out an incidence report and you can do it together. You’ll have some coworkers that will be apathetic and think “well that kid’s always getting into trouble.” But everyone can be a victim.
Q: Is cyber-bullying harder catch than face-to-face bullying?
A: Computers have IP addresses; if you have Facebook you have to register it. It’s not as anonymous as people would believe. You dig far enough and you can find out.
Interview with Chad Rose (July 28, 2011)
Q: How do you think cyberbullying is different from basic bullying?
A: Um, the fundamental difference between cyberbullying and bullying is anonymous nature of cyberbullying. You don’t have to have a face. It’s kinda changing the way we view bullying and victimization and it’s changing our roles of bullying and victimization. Someone might be a victim in the school setting and go to cyberspace world and become a bully. So they can engage in behaviors more on technology than they would otherwise engage in.
Q: How do you think technology has changed the fact of bullying in general?
A: Well it’s given kids a new avenue to engage in high levels of victimization. I mean if we could look at levels of technology, at some levels it’s a benefit for kids to have technology; okay they have access to technology. On the other hand, technology gives a different avenue to engage in bullying. I mean, people are being bullying on online gaming now. One thing is it allows victims to be victimized when they have never been victimized there. Before technology, they used to go to school, they’d be victimized…but now, they can’t leave school and it stays there. Ya know, they leave school and there’s another mode of victimization.
Q: Okay, which one would you say affects people more? Face to face bullying or cyberbullying or does it depend?
A: A huge part of it, it that the outcomes, the long-term outcomes of any kind of bullying, are going to be detrimental. When we see the long-term outcomes of verbal outcomes, ya know calling kids retarded or gay or anything like that, and the long term outcomes of violent bullying, or bullying through technology, is just as detrimental as this digital type of bullying. So it’s hard for me to say that we need to stop one more-so than the other because they’re all just as horrible for kids.
A: Um, the fundamental difference between cyberbullying and bullying is anonymous nature of cyberbullying. You don’t have to have a face. It’s kinda changing the way we view bullying and victimization and it’s changing our roles of bullying and victimization. Someone might be a victim in the school setting and go to cyberspace world and become a bully. So they can engage in behaviors more on technology than they would otherwise engage in.
Q: How do you think technology has changed the fact of bullying in general?
A: Well it’s given kids a new avenue to engage in high levels of victimization. I mean if we could look at levels of technology, at some levels it’s a benefit for kids to have technology; okay they have access to technology. On the other hand, technology gives a different avenue to engage in bullying. I mean, people are being bullying on online gaming now. One thing is it allows victims to be victimized when they have never been victimized there. Before technology, they used to go to school, they’d be victimized…but now, they can’t leave school and it stays there. Ya know, they leave school and there’s another mode of victimization.
Q: Okay, which one would you say affects people more? Face to face bullying or cyberbullying or does it depend?
A: A huge part of it, it that the outcomes, the long-term outcomes of any kind of bullying, are going to be detrimental. When we see the long-term outcomes of verbal outcomes, ya know calling kids retarded or gay or anything like that, and the long term outcomes of violent bullying, or bullying through technology, is just as detrimental as this digital type of bullying. So it’s hard for me to say that we need to stop one more-so than the other because they’re all just as horrible for kids.