Cyberbullying, according to several students and staff members, hurts more than a physical fight. “Cyberbullying affects [you] throughout your daily life,” junior Sarah Simonetti said.

According to Assistant Principal Phil Winston, cyberbullying, defined as online harassment, hurts longer than a physical fight and has untold long-term consequences and emotional impacts.

“I’ve never been cyberbullied except for that one time when someone sent me a message to my Honesty Box,” sophomore Paula Jung said. “It said, ‘You have hella small eyes.’”

Jung was initially upset by the words. “At first I was kind of sad, but I decided to not make it a big deal and didn’t respond back,” Jung said. “And I realized that I actually do have hella small eyes, so whatever.” Simonetti found herself in a similar situation a couple of years earlier. “Two summers ago, I got this message saying, ‘you have really gross legs, you shouldn’t wear shorts,’ and stuff like that,” she said. “I had a two-page conversation, and I deleted Honesty Box after that. That whole summer I guess, I was more self-conscious.”

Several students and administration members have cited Honesty Box, a Facebook Application that enables a Facebook friend or member of the same network to leave an anonymous message for someone, as a major cyberbullying method. “I think that most people cyberbully each other by Honesty Box because it’s anonymous,” Jung said. “It’s pretty shady.”

Compare People and Social Profile, two another Facebook application, also allows people to rank and comment on their friends in categories such as “hottest” and “smartest,” with a choice of anonymity.

Some students were cyberbullied not by the means of Facebook, but through other online mediums. “The first time [I was cyberbullied] was in fifth grade, and a boy had sent me a fake e-mail threatening me,” Simonetti said. “This guy in my class sent the e-mail to my teacher, another girl and me.”

However, some students say that cyberbullying is not a serious problem at Gunn. “I don’t think it happens a lot,” Jung said. “It happens indirectly. We judge each other and bully each other based on how they present themselves on the web. And I think that’s dumb.”

Simonetti agrees. “I feel like two years ago, [cyberbullying] was really bad because everyone was getting a Facebook, and everyone was getting a Honesty Box,” she said. “I think that it’s died down since then. I haven’t heard about any cyberbullying recently, but there was this issue about Gossip Girl at Gunn.” (See “Gunn Gossip” on right).

The school is involved only in some circumstances. “If it is done on any school campus, done from a school computer or something that carries over to school as to negatively affect a student’s performance or disrupts their education, if brought to administration’s attention, we take the situation seriously and administration can examine the context to see if involvement is necessary,” Winston said.

Currently, Gunn is discouraging cyberbullying through classes and other methods. “We’re letting people know that it’s an issue, and teachers talk about it in Living Skills,” Winston said. “We are also planning on showing the video to staff at our April staff meeting and engaging in conversation about how best to be proactive with cyberbullying. We also plan to create PSA’s with students to show on TBN about cyberbullying.”

In addition, a video was made by a select collaboration of students addressing cyberbullying last summer. The video was aimed at further educating students about cyberbullying in a more interactive way.

The video, which was originally going to be shown in the first assembly of the year, has not been seen yet due to scheduling issues.

However, Winston said that he plans to show the video in a future assembly. “I certainly hope [that we will show the video],” Winston said. “We want to validate and acknowledge everyone’s effort put into that. It has some realistic situations that we think students can relate to.”