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Megan Devlin NEWS EDITOR
hen Jessica* logged on to her UMentioned account last semester, she never expected to be faced with a homophobic comment. The second-year psychology student at King’s University College thought the UMentioned community was ostensibly accepting and tolerant. The comment read, “How are you liking vagina?” and was posted anonymously recently after Jessica got into a relationship with a girl. “It was inappropriate and homophobic and it bothered me,” Jessica said. She was upset that her sexuality had been brought into the public eye to be scrutinized by her peers. “That’s a terribly inappropriate thing to say. You would never say that to someone that was straight,” she said. Others commented on the post, saying things like “LOL,” and “tell it how it is.” Jessica was shocked that someone would ever commend anyone else for posting such a thing. “As somebody who’s the victim, there’s not much you can say without incriminating yourself more,” she said. The comment made her feel frustrated and hurt, and she wasn’t really sure what to do about it. We’ve all heard of the playground bully. But in the digital age, not only can that bully follow you home over the Internet, but they can follow you to university, too. Ryan Broll, a PhD candidate at Western studying cyberbullying, said that the phenomenon is gendered. “Females are more likely to be cyber-bullied. It is often sexual. Females are often cyber-bullied because of their appearance or their perceived sexual prowess,” he said. Nora*, a third-year student at Western, also ran into bullying issues last semester. It started when she saw something written on a bathroom stall, bearing her full name. “It basically said I was a fat slut who was incredibly selfobsessed,” Nora said. One week later, she was attacked online. The attack came in the form of a comment on one of her Instagram photos. “Once again, they said I was a huge slut, but this time they added I had a bad habit for drugs. This is a lie,” she said. “[The attacker] wasn’t following me on Instagram. I don’t even know how she thought of searching me up, or what made her
think to write something mean and hurtful to me,” Nora said. The episode left Nora shaken. “I never thought someone would ever say something like that about me because it’s never happened before. No one’s ever tried to bully me or hurt my feelings,” she said. In elementary and high school, where anti-bullying efforts are usually focused, students are encouraged to report harassment to an adult — usually a teacher or a guidance counsellor. However, when a student arrives at university, the authority figure may not be so clear. In fact, students should report online harassment to the police, Sergeant Ryan Austin of Western’s campus community police service, said. According to Austin, one of the most common online harassment issues is the sharing of intimate pictures after a breakup. “The initial part is where we encourage people to be a little bit safer with how they present themselves online,” Austin said. “That includes things like photos, texts and e-mails that they send out. You want to encourage them from the beginning to assume that it potentially could get out to anyone.” Historically, there wasn’t much police could do about such a breach of trust, since the photos had originally been shared consensually. But new legislation in the works may give the police more teeth when dealing with such cases of “revenge pornography.” “A new criminal legislation that is being brought in right now is going to make that a crime for someone to distribute it even after the fact even if it was originally sent consensually,” Austin said. Currently, all police can do is lay a child pornography charge if the person in the picture was underage when the picture was taken. Otherwise, they have virtually no power. However, online harassment, or cyber-bullying, stretches much farther than intimate picture sharing. Austin defined it as anything that makes the victim feel uncomfortable. He said it could be as extreme as repeated, threatening messages, or as basic as a rude, insulting post made about a user that that user didn’t like. “We have resources on campus that some normal police services don’t have. We have an extensive IT department at Western, which gives us the ability to delve into some of these >> see CYBER pg.3
*Names changed to protect identity
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