Students enrolled in Ottawa Catholic schools are now able to report bullies anonymously to the school's administration through a smartphone app.
This system helps overcome a major obstacle that sustains bullying, which is that it’s tough to report on bullies, because if they figure it out they’ll bully you even more. Anonymous reporting provides a way out for those who can’t report on bullying through conventional means, or who have found teachers unresponsive to their concerns.
There are two foreseeable problems with such a system, though. The first is that there may be a deluge of pointless, potentially embarrassing and false complaints. The second is that all this will do is increase the administrative burden on the school as they try and sort through all incoming information.
While those issues are speculation, the reality is this: Canadian schools have demonstrated a systemic inability to address bullying and the consequences have been horrific.
We know this, and as the Internet takes bullying beyond locker-room hazing and onto social media, it is worth – at a bare minimum – schools giving this app a shot, because it might help address the impotence of school administrators in tackling bullying.
As for the concerns, it is hardly a certainty that a reporting system will attract a deluge of false complaints, and even if it does, this is merely an administrative inconvenience, not a death knell for a potentially valuable system.
What is far more likely is that those managing the receiving end of the app will get dirty words and nasty comments, but that’s really only because it’s an alternative outlet to the walls of bathroom stalls.
It is true that complaints need to be treated with skepticism and care. It is important to realize that voicing concerns about bullying does not allege criminality. However, in an atmosphere that is already fraught with tension over bullying and false accusations, schools must devote the resources to ensure there is a proper screening system for complaints, operated by a trained administrator.
The resources may not exist to deal with an anonymous complaints system. This mirrors the problems of real life, where a complaint to a teacher doesn’t necessarily yield results, and those who are bullied just button their lips until graduation.
It’s worth the administrative difficulties to prompt schools to keep a closer watch on bullying. Our sympathies should not be with the student or pupil who bullies but with the person who is bullied.
What the app allows is a neat circumvention of the problems faced by students attempting to deal with the problems of bullying during school hours and who’ve had little luck speaking face-to-face with ambivalent authority figures.
The app provides documentation of incidents. It represents a commitment on the behalf of school boards to try and tackle the problems of bullying.
School boards have demonstrated an absolute inability to confront bullying. It’s high time to try something fresh – the costs of not pushing back against bullying are simply too high.