Federal investigators stepped in after the repeated taunting of a Waianae High student
By Mary Vorsino
Waianae High School teachers, administrators and staff will have to undergo training on properly responding to complaints of racial and sexual harassment following a case of extreme bullying.
The training is required under a voluntary agreement the state Department of Education reached with federal officials after the parents of a 17-year-old girl who was bullied relentlessly by peers say they couldn't get administrators at Waianae High to do anything to help their child.
Robert Hogan, of Waianae, said his daughter was subjected to racial and sexual harassment for months beginning in November and that Waianae High teachers and administrators did nothing despite repeated requests to intervene. Hogan also contacted the DOE's complaint line, but never got a response.
He then called the U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights, which launched a formal investigation.
Hogan said the bullying got so bad that his daughter suffered nightmares, would vomit in the morning because of anxiety about going to school and asked to be withdrawn and seek a GED.
"She was horribly harassed," said Hogan.
The racial and sexual harassment against his daughter, who is white, included name-calling and threats of physical violence, he said.
Kathryn Matayoshi, state schools superintendent, said the training -- which staff at the school must complete before Jan. 31 -- is aimed at making sure harassment cases are dealt with "appropriately and promptly."
"We need to be really clear that they need to act quickly," she said. "At this point, we want to move forward and make sure nothing happens again."
Hogan said the bullying of his daughter appears to have eased since the voluntary agreement was reached in late September.
But, he added, it hasn't stopped.
Just this week, he said, a student at the school threw a cockroach at his daughter and called her a name.
Hogan said his daughter, a senior this year, has been at Waianae High since the family moved to Hawaii from Oregon in the summer of 2009.
The 17-year-old suffers from spastic dysplasia, which affects her ability to walk; and she has a learning disability, her father said.
Under the agreement, the school must:
» Train staff on the procedures they must follow -- and the prompt action they must take -- if they become aware of racial or sexual harassment;
» Reiterate the school's commitment to investigate complaints of racial and sexual harassment;
» Train staff on the procedure students and parents can use to bring formal and informal concerns of racial and sexual harassment to the attention of school officials;
» Send out notices to students and parents with information on the school's policies that prohibit racial and sexual harassment. The notices also must include information on whom to contact with complaints.
» Write a letter to the Hogan family telling them that harassment is unacceptable and will not be tolerated, and outline what administrators will do to ensure the 17-year-old is no longer harassed.
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2010
Technology has made many things easier to do, including a whole raft of bad behavior along with the good. Rarely has there been a more poignant reminder of that than the tragic story of Tyler Clementi, the Rutgers University student who jumped to his death after a video of a homosexual encounter found its way online.
Rather than think about this as a grim aberration that's remote from local experience, however, Hawaii residents have to recognize that the misuse of online communications has become a national, even global, concern. The fact that such "cyberbullying" has not left a deep public imprint on island life doesn't mean it isn't here. Face-to-face bullying has a long and dismal history among the state's youths and, as so much relating among teens and pre-teens has moved online, it's safe to assume the bullying goes on amid the Facebook posts, YouTube shared videos and in other corners of the Web.
Bullying might even become more virulent in the virtual realm. It's easier to let fly a stinging barb or share an embarrassing story at someone's expense if you can do so without witnessing the reaction. Certainly, taunts posted on websites behave more like a virus, spreading quickly through a crowd. Worse yet, a cyber assault can leave an indelible mark. The evidence tends to persist for a prolonged period, if not forever.
Previous cyberbullying cases have produced a cascade of legislative actions in various states. In Hawaii, most of the effort has been within the realm of public schools. About a year ago, the state Department of Education added relevant language to Hawaii Administrative Rule 19, the set of regulations dealing with disciplinary actions.
So far the state Legislature has resisted efforts to expand on this. The most recent flurry of bills, emanating from the 2009 session, died quietly this year. One measure that got a hearing was Senate Bill 792, which sought an expanded list of DOE rules including, among several others, "a prohibition against students cyberbullying other students."
This drew down a protest from the Hawaii chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, over concerns that such broad language seems to cover activities both on and off campus; this, said the ACLU, could interfere with free-speech rights.
Pat Hamamoto, then the schools superintendent, rightly argued that the new rules, which were on the brink of adoption at that point, were sufficient. Currently, said a department spokesperson, the DOE is nearing completion on protocols to spell out more clearly how the rule would be carried out.
In other jurisdictions, case law has supported public school officials regulating off-campus cyberspeech only on occasions when it results in a disruption on campus. This seems to be a reasonable guiding principle. The role of school administration is to enable learning and free expression, but it's also there to protect the students' general safety and welfare. At some point cyberbullying can intrude on campus, regardless where the student sat when the keypad was tapped.
Beyond the disciplinary realm, both public and private schools have begun efforts to nip bad behavior in the bud. Former Honolulu police detective Chris Duque has made appearances in classrooms, speaking to students and teachers about the potential dangerous consequences of reckless online communications. Such intervention programs should be encouraged in schools.
But everyone owns a piece of this problem. Parents need to find the occasions to teach children that they are accountable for injuries they cause, regardless of how they're inflicted.
The Internet has been such a transformational tool of communication, it's easy to forget that it also can function as a barrier, that there are real people who can indeed be hurt on either side of the digital divide.
