NATION
Saturday, July 27, 2019
East Oregonian
A7
Girls report more harassment
amid rise in U.S. cyberbullying
Three times
as many girls
reporting being
harassed online or
by text message
than boys
AP Photo/Dave Collins
Supporters of immigrant Sujitno Sajuti rally outside the fed-
eral courthouse in Hartford, Conn.
By SALLY HO
Associated Press
SEATTLE — Rachel
Whalen remembers feeling
gutted in high school when
a former friend would
mock her online post-
ings, threaten to unfollow
or unfriend her on social
media and post inside jokes
about her to others online.
The cyberbullying was
so distressing that Whalen
said she contemplated sui-
cide. Once she got help, she
decided to limit her time
on social media. It helps to
take a break from it for per-
spective, said Whalen, now
a 19-year-old college stu-
dent in Utah.
There’s a rise in cyber-
bullying nationwide, with
three times as many girls
reporting being harassed
online or by text message
than boys, according to the
National Center for Educa-
tion Statistics.
The U.S. Department
of Education’s research
and data arm this month
released its latest survey,
which shows an uptick in
online abuse, though the
overall number of students
who report being bullied
stayed the same.
“There’s just some
pressure in that competi-
tive atmosphere that is all
about attention,” Whalen
said. “This social media
acceptance — it just makes
sense to me that it’s more
predominant
amongst
girls.”
Many school systems
that once had a hands-off
approach to dealing with
off-campus student behav-
As Trump expands
deportation powers,
immigrants prepare
AP Photo/Rick Bowmer
Rachel Whalen, 19, was so distressed about the cyberbullying she suffered in high school
that she contemplated suicide. Whalen is now a college student in Utah.
ior are now making rules
around cyberbullying, out-
lining punishments, such
as suspension or expul-
sion, according to Bryan
Joffe, director of educa-
tion and youth develop-
ment at AASA, a national
school
superintendents
association.
That change partly
came along with broader
cyberbullying laws, which
have been adopted in states
like Texas and California
in recent years.
The survey showed
about 20%, or one in five
students, reported being
bullied, ranging from
rumors or being excluded to
threats and physical attacks
in the 2016-17 school year.
That’s unchanged from the
previous survey done in
2014-15.
But in that two-
year span, cyberbully-
ing reports increased sig-
nificantly, from 11.5% to
15.3%.
Broken down by gen-
der, 21% of girls in middle
and high school reported
being bullied online or by
text message in the 2016-
17 school year, compared
with less than 7% of boys.
That’s up from the pre-
vious survey in 2014-15,
the first time cyberbullying
data was collected this spe-
cifically. Back then, about
16% of girls between 12
and 18 said they were bul-
lied online, compared with
6% of boys.
The survey doesn’t
address who the aggressors
are, though girls were more
likely to note that their bul-
lies were perceived to have
the ability to influence
others.
Lauren Paul, founder
of the Kind Campaign,
said 90% of the stories
she hears while working
in schools are girls being
bullied by other girls. The
California-based nonprofit
launched a decade ago to
focus on “girl against girl”
bullying through free edu-
cational programming that
reaches about 300 schools
a year.
Paul recalls meeting
one girl who was obses-
sive about her social media
accounts because a group
of girls excluded her if she
did not get enough likes or
follows in any given week.
She went so far as to pains-
takingly create fake profiles
just to meet her quota.
“Most of the time —
if not almost all the time
— it’s about what’s going
on with other girls,” Paul
said. “It’s this longing to
be accepted by their female
peers specifically and feel-
ing broken if they don’t.”
Though Paul primarily
hosts assemblies and work-
shop exercises at middle
and high schools, she said
there’s been more demand
to help younger and older
students in recent years.
The Kind Campaign has
gotten more requests for
elementary school presen-
tations and now also regu-
larly gets called to universi-
ties to work with sororities.
The latest national data
may spark new conversa-
tions about “Mean Girls”
behavior, Joffe said, refer-
ring to 2004 movie starring
Lindsay Lohan.
“It’s a school issue,
but it’s just a reflection of
broader societal issues,”
Joffe said.
A sweeping
expansion of
deportation powers
has sent chills
through immigrant
communities
By SOPHIA TAREEN
Associated Press
CHICAGO — A sweep-
ing expansion of deportation
powers unveiled this week
by the Trump administra-
tion has sent chills through
immigrant communities and
prompted some lawyers to
advise migrants to gather up
as much documentation as
possible — pay stubs, apart-
ment leases or even gym key
tags — to prove they’ve been
in the U.S.
But the uncertainty about
how the policy might play
out has created confusion
and made it harder to give
clear guidance to immi-
grants. Attorneys and immi-
grant rights groups gave con-
flicting advice about whether
to carry these documents.
The new rules will allow
immigration officers nation-
wide to deport anyone who
has been here illegally for
less than two years. Cur-
rently, authorities can only
exercise such powers within
100 miles of the border and
only target people who have
been here less than two
weeks.
Critics say the new policy
will embolden Immigration
Customs and Enforcement
officers to indiscriminately
round
up
immigrants,
depriving them of a chance
to make their cases before
a judge or consult with a
lawyer. Some have called
it a “show me your papers”
trope on a national scale, and
roughly 300,000 immigrants
living in the country illegally
could be affected by the
expansion, according to one
estimate by the nonpartisan
Migration Policy Institute.
Attorneys immediately
began advising immigrants
to start compiling documents
that prove they had been in
the country for at least two
years — anything showing
a consistent presence in the
United States. But they don’t
have to necessarily carry it
with them.
“We’re operating abso-
lutely blind at the moment,”
said David Leopold, an
immigration attorney in
Cleveland.
For years, immigrant
rights groups have advised
people without legal status to
not carry any identification
with a place of origin on it so
it doesn’t come back to hurt
them in immigration court.