Within the past few years, public schools have made an effort to raise awareness of cyber bullying. To sum up what most students have learned: (1) Cyber bullies are extremely dangerous because they hide behind fake usernames (2) Cyber bullying is hard to control (3) Megan Meier was a victim of cyberbullying who committed suicide in 2006.  When I first learned about this new brand of bullying, I only had one thought: “Wow, that’s awful, but nobody at Edina would do something like that.”

On Monday when I found out that the sophomores in my gym class had left first hour to go to an assembly on cyber bullying, I was less than concerned. I had assumed that maybe a parent had complained to administration about an inappropriate text message or something on Facebook. However, when I saw what actually prompted the assembly–a thread created by 10^th grade English teachers for students to post on–I was extremely disappointed not only in the immaturity of some of the comments, but the disrespect that students had for each other and for their teachers.

Out of respect to the school, I do not want to post a link to the thread. However, I would like readers to get two things out of reading this post.

The first is that the 10^th grade English teachers are not to blame. Many students have pointed fingers at the teachers, saying it’s silly to give students the opportunity to post anonymously on a thread. However, one look at the intent of the thread can tell us otherwise.

The discussion topic of the thread was “Passion.” Students were supposed to post about what they thought passion was, and what they are passionate about. I’m a senior at Edina High School, almost a legal adult, and still barely mature enough to talk about “Passion” in front of my peers without some level of sarcasm. To be honest, talking about that kind of stuff makes most teens feel corny and awkward. With the thread, however, teachers gave students an opportunity to talk about this topic in depth without any restraint by allowing them to post anonymously. I’m not sure if this was the teachers’ intent, but anonymous threads shouldn’t be ruled out as a completely dangerous teaching tool. The anonymity gave many students who feel uncomfortable about speaking up about serious topics an opportunity score some participation points and a little insight. Unfortunately, the few students who took the assignment seriously and posted legitimate responses were shot down by others who sarcastically (and anonymously) responded “SO PASSIONATE!”, while others resorted to blatantly offensive and irrelevant comments under names as original as “your mother.” To those who take a look at the anonymous forum and say “Well what did the teachers expect from a bunch of high schoolers?” the answer seems pretty clear to me: Teachers expected students to share ideas in a way that felt less awkward than standing up in front of a class to talk about passion.

The second point that I’d like to make is that this post isn’t about scolding the sophomore class.  People will say, “Yeah, I heard the sophomores are crazy this year,” but the fact is, people say that about every sophomore class. When I was a sophomore, my friends in the grade above me would say, “Hey, I heard your grade is really bad!” and students in my class said the same thing about the juniors. It’ll be really easy to call the sophomores bad eggs, but it was really only a handful of students that abused the thread. And, if we’re going to place blame on the entire sophomore class, why not just let it reflect on the entire school? When the Minnetonka rock incident happened, students seemed to understand that it was a careless mistake that fell on the backs of a few students, not an entire class. That kind of understanding from other grades is what we need now.

The cyber bullying incident that students and teachers now have on their hands is something that our administration is taking very seriously with good reason. What’s just as frustrating as the offensive comments, slurs, and jokes posted on the thread, however, is peoples’ eagerness to point fingers. I hope that in reading this post you’ll realize that fault lies in the handful of students who chose to abuse their privileges, and not in our English teachers nor the sophomore class.