SD students target cyberbullying by drafting state bill

The South Dakota Board of Regents Student Federation is crafting a cyberbullying bill to submit to the South Dakota Legislature by the next legislative session in January.

South Dakota is one of 11 states in the nation that does not have an anti-cyberbullying law, which, said Dennis Smith, executive director for the Student Federation, explains the Federation’s push to lobby for such a bill.

Smith said the law will hopefully make a constructive impact on existing South Dakota laws.

“This law will create a more positive atmosphere and raise awareness,” he said. “It would help enforce (harassment) laws and make a stricter control of the laws that are already in place.”

Smith’s definition of cyberbullying is “any sort of sexual or verbal harassment that happens over the Internet: Facebook, email, Twitter, any sort of social media that either creates a negative atmosphere or makes a certain individual unwelcome.”

Smith said social media pages, such as “Coyote Confessions,” are popping up all over South Dakota and raising concerns.

“It’s one thing to post ‘I got intoxicated and did something stupid.’ That’s a confession — people find those funny,” Smith said. “But straight up saying, ‘Here’s a specific individual and then here’s something sexually derogative toward him or her’ — people shouldn’t be able to get away with it (cyberbullying) just because their identity is hidden.”

Zach Nipp is the legislative director of the Student Federation and has also been involved in outlining the anti-cyberbullying bill.

“It’s a tricky situation when you’re trying to enforce legislation on a third party,” Nipp said. “You can’t punish Facebook for allowing (cyberbullying).”

Nipp said the Federation is working out the legality of the proposed bill, and said when drawing up legislation like this, placing the line between liberty and abuse is the hardest aspect to bear in mind.

“You want to make sure you don’t bite off more than you can chew,” he said. “It is such a slippery slope of ‘this should be counted as an attack, this is sexual harassment or rather this is a free website, this is protected by the First Amendment,’ that’s going to be the biggest hurdle.”

Clay Hoffman, vice president of the Student Government Association, said while student welfare is important, cyberbullying needs to be researched more.

“There are still some questions that are unanswered and there is definitely more research that needs to be done,” Hoffman said. “Cyberbullying is really a touchy subject with First Amendment rights.”

Hoffman also said there are certain statues in South Dakota law which deal with stalking through an electronic means.

“(Cyberbullying) is really hard to define — there is a lot of gray area out there,” he said.

However, Smith said good will come from this project whether the current bill is passed or not.

“If the bill is not passed then this will definitely become an awareness campaign,” Smith said. “There is even talk about mobilizing high schools to fight (cyberbullying), because that is really where the pressure of cyberbullying comes from. The goal of this legislation is to keep everyone safe.”