 "Photo: Courtesy Micheal Meister")
Beads of sweat rolled down the girl’s face as her fingers trembled nervously before clicking the mouse to check her Facebook inbox. As she held her breath waiting for the page to load, she thought to herself how many hateful messages she would receive that day.
The scene describes many college students on campus, as more bullies are using the Internet as a canvas of hurtful words.
The Cyberbullying Research Center defines the cyber insults, also known as mobile bullying and digital bullying, as “willful and repeated harm inflicted through the use of computers, cell phones, and other electronic devices.”
MySpace, Facebook and JuicyCampus are just a few of the social networking Web sites that bullies use to target their victims.
Photography major Myron Watkins was harassed with unwanted phone calls, as someone made a fake Facebook account in his name using his cell phone number.
“I have a photography business and someone made an account saying horrible things about me and put up bad photographs that I didn’t take,” Watkins said.
He never found out who made the page and eventually had to get his number changed.
“People do things over the Internet that they can’t get away with in person,” he said.
It is easier for people to conceal their identity on the Internet, as Facebook users can make up many miscellaneous accounts as well as use applications like the honesty box, in which users can write anonymous messages to people without revealing who they are.
Bradley Nelson was targeted last semester on the popular gossip Web site juicycampus.com.
“Someone posted spiteful and untruthful comments about me and it almost ruined my relationship with my girlfriend,” he said. “They wrote that I was promiscuous and other hurting things. I’m new to this school, and I hardly know anybody for someone to even make those accusations about me.”
Nelson said he wrote the publisher of the Web site, requesting him to remove the posts, but they never did.
Since Feb. 5, juciycampus.com has been shut down due to the lack of funding from advertisers pulling from the site, and being banned from numerous college campuses, according to the Los Angeles Times.
There have not been any reports of cyberbullying on WSU’s campus, according to the University Security staff member Sean Thomas.
“On this campus, we have a zero-tolerance policy for anything like that,” he said. “Anyone that has to hide behind the computer screen is a coward, and the university takes any type of threat or verbal bullying serious.”
Thomas suggests that if anyone is being bullied online, they should let a university official know, as well as save any record of Facebook messages or e-mails that can be used as evidence.
Cyberbullying can ruin reputations and lives. It would be better to face a person than hide behind a keyboard.
“People feel they have more power in cyberspace, but they are really just Internet gangsters,” Watkins said.
Editor’s note: Bradley Nelson is a pseudonym.
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