In Massachusetts, there have been a couple high profile suicides over the past year by students that were the result of being “bullyed” at school. While each death is a tragedy, the Massachusetts Legislature, backed by the public’s outrage, is trying to pass “anti-bullying” legislation in order to somehow fix the problem. The legislation covers the usual bases, making it illegal to harass students at school, but the bill also covers…

…bullying through, without limitation, electronic mails, cellular phones, instant messages, text messages or websites…

…and that each school district must prohibit…

…bullying through the use of the district computer system while on or off campus…

Of course, the legislation is, like any law, vague in how the school is to accomplish such things.

With schools keen to embrace the “computers and broadband for everyone” mantra, and with the possibility of it becoming illegal for students to harass one another online, are we going to see more mandatory school issued computers for students tightly locked down with monitoring software and all activities logged? With the recent groundswell of support by parents of stiffer penalties I worry about whether or not there would be similar outrage if such an incident like the one in LMSD occurs again. Will the general public be aghast or pleased at the fact that a school district monitors such behavior in a few years time? Even more concerning, as pointed out in ComputerWorld, schools get to slide sometimes as they have a sort of quasi-guardianship of students. It scares me that  if such legislation is passed and such an incident occurs again, the school may be able to legally hide behind such legislation saying that they’re trying to protect the general student populace as required by law.

Now, I am no fan of bullies, as I’m sure any computer geek that went to public schools can attest. However, despite the fact that everyone can agree that students harassing other students is bad, the schools should not have the right to monitor and investigate any behavior that happens physically off school grounds. Such areas are the parent’s and, if necessary, law enforcement’s domain. Also, as we start going even further down this slippery slope, are we going to see schools wanting to gain more access into student’s personal accounts if they access them from a school district computer? Wow! Check it out! This slope is slippery!

Any such legislation that mandates the protection of students must also mandate due process and protect the privacy of students, both the harassed and harassers. Otherwise we may start to see incidents like the one at LMSD stop being the exception and start being the rule.