Standing Up to Cyber-Bullying
“I hear a buzz. … It’s a group text but all the numbers are blocked. It reads check out this geek, and the picture connected to it is of my best friend Sarah.”
Those words, and the thousand following, won Central Middle School’s Jenna O’Connell first prize in this year’s Fred B. Benjamin Peace Writing Contest for Middle Schoolers.
Sarah is author O’Connell’s creative response to the cruelty of cyber-bulling. Sarah is not a real person, although, the eighth-grader told Bay Weekly, “she is based on some real experience, but not at school.”
Recognizing and countering that bullying — through “text messages, email and social media such as Facebook, MySpace, Tumblr and Formspring” — was the challenge this year’s contest posed.
Urged by friends, O’Connell took the challenge on her own, not as a class assignment. Her aunts were her editors, “looking it over” and suggesting she “look up more information.”
Three hundred twelve other students also took this year’s challenge, announced statewide to 400 public and private middle schools, according to organizer Michael Keller of Anne Arundel Peace Action, one of the four sponsoring organizations.
Other sponsors are the Maryland Peace Action Education Fund, Annapolis Friends Meeting and the Benjamin Peace Foundation, which inspired and funds the 18-year-old competition.
To counter cyber-bullying the eighth-grader wrote of reaching out to her school’s guidance counselor and principal, who suggested a bully awareness group.
“So that’s exactly what we did,” she wrote. “We created posters and spoke on the announcement about how bullying is wrong and why.”
O’Connell’s research told her that Maryland was one of 19 states with cyber-bullying laws. Ours, passed in 2013, is called Grace’s Law.
“We will make a difference,” she vows. “Small things done by a group of kids can have a positive impact.”
That’s just the kind of confident activism Baltimore peace activist Fred Benjamin hoped would be his legacy. Benjamin’s will left a “considerable sum,” Keller told Bay Weekly, “to give young people the opportunity to think creatively about the major issues of peace and social justice while sharpening and strengthening their writing skills.”
Thinking and writing creatively earned O’Connell $350 as well as the honor of first-place peace activist. Second-prize winner Ryan Zhang of Frederick earned $250, third-prize winner Lola Hosse of Pasadena’s Chesapeake Bay Middle School won $150 and fourth-prize winner Ryan Puthumana, also of Frederick, won $100.