Campus Engagement

Campus Engagement

Date: April 16, 2012

UCF Event: Taking Up Space: "Taking Up Space: Middle School Girls' Responses to (Cyber) Bullying"

                This week for Campus Engagement I attended a presentation on the research project "Taking Up Space: Middle School Girls Responses to (Cyber) Bullying".  The presentation talked about the national trends on harassment and bullying in schools as it applies to middle school girls.  When I first heard about the opportunity to attend this presentation I thought it would be a great opportunity to learn about the information as it pertains to both this class and my major, Elementary Education.  Cyber Bullying has become a nationally recognized issues in schools more specifically at the middle and high school level.  Bullying has always been a problem among school age children but it has never gotten to the extreme that it is now.  With the development of social media and technology and how much it is used by school aged children there are far more methods for students to communicate with one another.  This also means that students also have more means to harass one another, social media nad electronic communication are monitored far less by both parents and administrators than actual conversation occurring in the classroom.  With issue making national headlines the Woman’s Studies Department at UCF decided to focus their research on it. 

                The presenter first introduced the presentation by speaking about the media and how movies and television portray bullying and harassment among girls in school.  After she showed up to video segments she explained that the messages being given to us by the mass media need to be looked at and that popular media has a major impact on our society.  I strongly agree with this statement, I think that it is important to see that we don’t live in a bubble and that as aggravating as the media can be at times it does have an overwhelming impact on our society especially young people and shouldn’t be ignored.   Then we got into the research that has been done and the findings.  I found it very interesting when we were shown the girls attitudes as they were measured in the pre-survey and how the local trends compare to those nationally.  When the presenter was sharing these findings with us she made sure to include the definitions of bullying and harassment as they were defined for the project and as they are defined by the school board and the law.  I knew that bullying was being taken seriously in schools but I was surprised to learn that if a child reports that they have been bullied that legal action can be taken.  Unfortunately we learned that in many instances parents feel that even when the instances are reported to the staff and administrators very little action is taken.  Overall I enjoyed the presentation and I felt that it was made to be very interested when sometimes presentations of research projects can be often dry.

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