Experts and Educators Try to Define Line Between Texting and Trouble

One of the most vexing legal questions raised by New Jersey’s two-year-old anti-bullying law remains how to address incidents that occur online and off school grounds -- including nights and weekends.

Cyberbullying was the focus of a daylong conference yesterday at Rutgers University in Newark, where lawyers, scholars, educators, and others discussed the difficulties of drawing a legal line that determines if schools -- or parents -- are culpable.

Enacted in 2011, the Anti-Bullying Bill of Rights states that schools must investigate incidents of online bullying if they disrupt or disturb the educational environment .

In the first year of the law, more than 12,000 reported cases of bullying were investigated -- a 50 percent increase from the year before -- with more than 1,000 taking place via smartphone, computer, or other electronic device.

But it isn’t always easy to make a direct connection between a Facebook posting or an insulting text and what happens in schools, according to state Attorney General Jeffrey Chiesa, who said the state continues to grapple with how to define cyberbullying. 

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