Schools act against phone ?text bullies

Lesley Reidy | 11th April 2005

"Text bullying" has received the thumbs down from principals around the region as more teenagers latch on to another form of harassment.

Text bullying is defined as any text messages, photos or phone calls that upset, or any threats or messages which are repeatedly sent to harass someone.

A Kuranui College newsletter recently referred to text bullying and said students were reporting a growing number of instances of it taking place within the college.

Kuranui College principal Grey Tuck said an incident a couple of weeks earlier had prompted a mention in the school newsletter.

"This year text bullying is coming from people who are no longer at school and I'm finding that it's often friends who are falling out with each other," he said.

"It appears to be more of a female thing where there's a falling out between them, often revolving around a boy."

Mr Tuck said the school treated the issue very seriously.

"There's text bullying in every school, but what worries me is what is happening outside of school in the way of abusive text messages.

"I have every right to suspend a student who is interfering with the right of another to learn and I have had conversations with certain students about that."

Mr Tuck said while he agreed that mobile phones had a very important role to play in peoples' lives, they were also open to abuse and the school was prepared to work hard to eradicate the problem.

Rathkeale College principal Neville Duckmanton said he had addressed the school about text bullying on two occasions last year and had dealt with two separate incidents of text bullying.

"One involved a student at the school and one from another school," he said.

"One boy here was text bullied by eight girls from another school, the boy concerned was quite traumatised and needed some counselling."

Mr Duckmanton said he had no hesitancy about bringing text bullying to the attention of police if he thought it serious enough and measures were in place to protect students as much as possible.

"Students are not allowed phones in class and we have a policy with boarders in the junior house that all phones are put in one central place at night so there can be no access to them," he said.

"We take this kind of text messaging as bullying, it's very insidious, and parents really do need to keep a close eye on it."

Chanel College principal Jo Matthews said there had been no cases of text bullying at her school, but it was something they were aware of and educating students about.

"It's not like we don't talk about the issue of text bullying, because if it did happen we wouldn't be able to recognise it, so it is discussed ? and all the students know that we wouldn't tolerate it."

Mrs Matthews said mobile phones were not allowed in the school and if a student did arrive at school with one, they were told to leave it at the school office and collect it at the end of the day.

Telecom and Vodafone are also both doing their bit to fight text bullying and joined forces with NetSafe, an internet and phone safety group in 2004, to educate young people in particular about what they can do to combat the problem.

This help includes developing brochures on how to handle text bullies, and both phone companies also have the ability to block or bar a customer from their network if they use a mobile phone inappropriately.