{"id":2772,"date":"2011-01-19T23:12:57","date_gmt":"2011-01-19T23:12:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/?p=2772"},"modified":"2013-03-12T09:08:48","modified_gmt":"2013-03-12T15:08:48","slug":"bill-would-define-cyber-bullying","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/?p=2772","title":{"rendered":"Bill would define cyber-bullying"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Education Committee heard testimony Jan. 18 on a bill that would expand the Student Discipline Act to include cyber-bullying.<\/p>\n<p>LB123, introduced by Elk Creek Sen. Lavon Heidemann, would define cyber-bullying as any ongoing use of electronic mail, text messaging, social networking websites or any other form of electronic communication on or off school grounds with the intention of causing harm or serious emotional distress to students or school personnel.<\/p>\n<p>Under the bill, cyber-bullying would be grounds for long-term suspension, expulsion or mandatory reassignment if the behavior results in disruption of the school environment or is a safety threat.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWith the widespread use of the Internet by students, these issues are not going to go away,\u201d Heidemann said, predicting that they instead will become more common.<\/p>\n<p>Deb Kubik, a former Nebraska City High School teacher and a proponent of the bill, was the target of a Facebook group created by students that, she said, was intended to cause harm.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis took a huge toll on me personally,\u201d she said, explaining that the page caused her to fear for her and her family\u2019s safety.<\/p>\n<p>Kubik said she reported the situation to school administrators but said they did not offer support or address the issue.<\/p>\n<p>Greg Perry of the Nebraska Council of School Attorneys also testified in support. When schools consider cases like these, they must answer two questions, he said: Did the conduct occur on school grounds? And did this conduct cause material disruption?<\/p>\n<p>In Kubik\u2019s case, the incident did not occur on school grounds, he said, which made the situation difficult for administrators and school officials to resolve.<\/p>\n<p>Perry said LB123 would expand existing bullying statutes to recognize that cyber-bullying occuring off school grounds affects students and teachers when they are on school grounds.<\/p>\n<p>Current statutes define bullying as an ongoing pattern of physical, verbal or electronic abuse that occurs:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>on school grounds;<\/li>\n<li>in a vehicle owned, leased or contracted by a school being used for a school purpose by a school employee or his or her designee; or<\/li>\n<li>at school-sponsored activities or school-sponsored athletic events.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Larry Ramaekers, superintendent for Aurora Public Schools, also testified in support of LB123.<\/p>\n<p>Ramaekers said he dealt with a situation similar to Kubik\u2019s in which an inappropriate Facebook comment was made. The issue became ongoing, he said, because the message was sent to all of the author\u2019s Facebook friends.<\/p>\n<p>Under the current statute, administrators were able to have the comment removed, he said, but had LB123 been in effect they would have had more tools to deal with the issue.<\/p>\n<p>Barbara Paris, a member of the watchdog group Bully Police USA, also testified in support of the bill, saying that it is time to remove the code of silence among young people. She said that children don\u2019t report cyber-bullying because they believe nothing will be done and because there is \u201cno backbone\u201d within the law.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe don\u2019t allow this in the workplace,\u201d she said. \u201cPeople would be fired, yet we expect our children to tolerate this.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Paris said the question continues to be whether cyber-bullying interferes with a student\u2019s right to learn or a teacher\u2019s right to teach.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe need this law to protect the educational process, not to interfere with it,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p>But Amy Miller, legal director of the ACLU Nebraska chapter, expressed concern that the bill might interfere with students\u2019 free speech rights.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe hold children to a different standard,\u201d Miller said. \u201cA comment \u2014 maybe one or two comments \u2014 is part of a child growing up and learning how to live in society.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In her neutral testimony, she said the bill is too broad and that general matters of opinion could be classified as cyber-bullying if the bill\u2019s language is not revised.<\/p>\n<p>Specifically, she suggested that the bill define \u201con or off school grounds\u201d to further clarify a school\u2019s responsibility.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou don\u2019t want to allow schools to govern conduct of students 24 hours a day,\u201d Miller said.<\/p>\n<p>The bill would require school districts to develop and adopt a policy concerning cyber-bullying prevention and education by July 1.<\/p>\n<p>The committee took no immediate action on the bill.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Education Committee heard testimony Jan. 18 on a bill that would expand the Student Discipline Act to include cyber-bullying.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"colormag_page_container_layout":"default_layout","colormag_page_sidebar_layout":"default_layout","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8],"tags":[125],"class_list":["post-2772","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education","tag-sen-lavon-heidemann"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2772","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2772"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2772\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10630,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2772\/revisions\/10630"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2772"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2772"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2772"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}