- Apr 14, 2001
- 57,504
- 20,110
- 146
Oops, fixed now 
Here's an excerpt--
rest of the article at
http://www.salon.com/mwt/feature/2001/07/03/cyber_bullies/index.html
The Interschool Ho voting booth listed and ranked 150 students before
parents and teachers got word of it and had it shut down -- first by
e-mailing the webmaster of Freevote.com, and when that didn't work,
by having the Manhattan district attorney place a call to
Freevote.com to give it a nudge.
No charges were filed in this case; no students were suspended or
expelled, and the intervention of the D.A. seems to have been more of
a warning shot than any indication of an intention to press charges.
Charles Heins of the D.A.'s office told the New Yorker, "It's very
clear: There's no accounting for taste, but the site is protected by
the First Amendment Free Speech clause."
A few miles away, the students at Horace Greeley High School in
Chappaqua, N.Y., a wealthy Westchester County suburb, were not so
lucky. When word got around school in late May that a Web site run by
two senior boys, and accessible by password to about 14 other boys,
contained personal information on some 40 girls -- including family
history, phone numbers, addresses and, most troubling, sexual
experience -- the principal, Kathy Mason, called the New Castle
Police Department. The two boys were suspended for five days without
a hearing and charged with second-degree harassment, which carries a
sentence of up to one year in jail and a $1,000 fine.
Days later, Westchester District Attorney Jeanne Piro announced that,
while some of the material on the site was "offensive and abhorrent,"
it did not meet the legal definition of harassment and criminal
charges against the two boys would be dropped. The community reacted
with outrage. (The boys -- through their lawyer -- declined to give
interviews.)
Perhaps the most extreme case of message-board malignancy this spring
occurred in Dallas. The postings started May 29 on the message board
of a Web site started by a former student at suburban Lake Highlands
High School. The thread was called "Lauren is a fat cow MOO BITCH."
Among other things, the anonymous poster, who identified him or
herself by the term MOO BITCH, made fun of Lake Highlands sophomore
Lauren Newby for her weight ("people don't like you because you are a
suicidal cow who can't stop eating", her bout with multiple
sclerosis ("I guess I'll have to wait until you kill yourself which I
hope is not long from now, or I'll have to wait until your disease
(M.S.) kills you", and urged her boyfriend Chris to break up with
her ("I will have a huge celebration and hook up Chris with some
hookers so that he knows what a non-fat cow looks like."
The Lake Highlands message board, which can still be viewed online,
is exceptional not only for the viciousness of the attacks on Newby
(which included an entire page consisting of the words "Die bitch
queen!" repeated hundreds of times) but also because the violence
online escalated into the offline world.
Newby's car was egged, "MOO BITCH" was scrawled in shaving cream on
the sidewalk in front of her house, and on the evening of June 7, a
bottle filled with acid was thrown at her front door. Newby's mother,
who opened the door, suffered minor acid burns, and the arson
department was called in to investigate. It's still not clear if the
person responsible for the postings was also responsible for the
vandalism, but in a report filed with the Dallas Police Department,
Lauren stated that she believes that both were the work of a single
individual. (She did not return calls from Salon.)
Here's an excerpt--
rest of the article at
http://www.salon.com/mwt/feature/2001/07/03/cyber_bullies/index.html
The Interschool Ho voting booth listed and ranked 150 students before
parents and teachers got word of it and had it shut down -- first by
e-mailing the webmaster of Freevote.com, and when that didn't work,
by having the Manhattan district attorney place a call to
Freevote.com to give it a nudge.
No charges were filed in this case; no students were suspended or
expelled, and the intervention of the D.A. seems to have been more of
a warning shot than any indication of an intention to press charges.
Charles Heins of the D.A.'s office told the New Yorker, "It's very
clear: There's no accounting for taste, but the site is protected by
the First Amendment Free Speech clause."
A few miles away, the students at Horace Greeley High School in
Chappaqua, N.Y., a wealthy Westchester County suburb, were not so
lucky. When word got around school in late May that a Web site run by
two senior boys, and accessible by password to about 14 other boys,
contained personal information on some 40 girls -- including family
history, phone numbers, addresses and, most troubling, sexual
experience -- the principal, Kathy Mason, called the New Castle
Police Department. The two boys were suspended for five days without
a hearing and charged with second-degree harassment, which carries a
sentence of up to one year in jail and a $1,000 fine.
Days later, Westchester District Attorney Jeanne Piro announced that,
while some of the material on the site was "offensive and abhorrent,"
it did not meet the legal definition of harassment and criminal
charges against the two boys would be dropped. The community reacted
with outrage. (The boys -- through their lawyer -- declined to give
interviews.)
Perhaps the most extreme case of message-board malignancy this spring
occurred in Dallas. The postings started May 29 on the message board
of a Web site started by a former student at suburban Lake Highlands
High School. The thread was called "Lauren is a fat cow MOO BITCH."
Among other things, the anonymous poster, who identified him or
herself by the term MOO BITCH, made fun of Lake Highlands sophomore
Lauren Newby for her weight ("people don't like you because you are a
suicidal cow who can't stop eating"
, her bout with multiple sclerosis ("I guess I'll have to wait until you kill yourself which I
hope is not long from now, or I'll have to wait until your disease
(M.S.) kills you"
, and urged her boyfriend Chris to break up with her ("I will have a huge celebration and hook up Chris with some
hookers so that he knows what a non-fat cow looks like."
The Lake Highlands message board, which can still be viewed online,
is exceptional not only for the viciousness of the attacks on Newby
(which included an entire page consisting of the words "Die bitch
queen!" repeated hundreds of times) but also because the violence
online escalated into the offline world.
Newby's car was egged, "MOO BITCH" was scrawled in shaving cream on
the sidewalk in front of her house, and on the evening of June 7, a
bottle filled with acid was thrown at her front door. Newby's mother,
who opened the door, suffered minor acid burns, and the arson
department was called in to investigate. It's still not clear if the
person responsible for the postings was also responsible for the
vandalism, but in a report filed with the Dallas Police Department,
Lauren stated that she believes that both were the work of a single
individual. (She did not return calls from Salon.)
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