by Devin Cornelius ‘12 and Hope Gouterman ‘13

After a concerned parent contacted Sherwood in October about a Facebook page entitled “Sherwood’s Bait,” school faculty members monitored the site for threatening or obscene material and contacted the student responsible for creating the page. The account, created by an undisclosed male student, rated roughly 20 female students based on their level of physical attractiveness.

School Resource Officer Brett Mauritte stated that the male student removed the site himself. A member of Sherwood’s security team reported that the school could not further discuss the matter due to concerns about the student’s privacy.

The ‘Sherwood’s Bait’ page returned to Facebook on November 21. It is unclear whether school administration or security again will contact the student about the page or if they are even aware of its reappearance. The Facebook page remains the same as before and contains images, taken from other students’ Facebook pages, of females from all grade levels who meet the creator’s standards.

According to a “CyberSafety” document jointly issued by MCPS, the Montgomery County Police Department and the county’s State Attorney Office, “cyberbullying” covers a range of online behaviors, including defaming, harassing, masquerading and outing. Online behavior rises to the level of cyberbullying if it is intentionally embarrassing, humiliating, threatening or targeting to an individual or group of people using e-mail, social sites, blogs, mobile phones or other technological methods. A school security member would not comment on the specifics of the “Bait” site, but he did say that it could be considered cyberbullying based on the reactions of the girls involved.

“I was initially confused as to why I was being compared to a fishing lure tactic. Eventually, however, I became fairly creeped out that someone had been looking through my pictures and saving them,” said junior Nikki Steiner, one of the girls rated on the site. She does not feel that the site was a form of cyberbullying but only a student trying to be funny.

Facebook pages such as Sherwood Bait are a common occurrence at high schools throughout MCPS, but it is not clear what the school system or individual schools can do about them if they deem them inappropriate. According to MCPS’s “Acceptable Use and Internet Safety” policy, if such sites (or any non school-related sites for that matter) are accessed while at school and are causing a distraction, the school is entitled to take away that student’s computer privileges.

However, for online material created or accessed outside of school, there are no clear-cut policies for how a school can intervene or not. If hurt feelings are carried from home to school, the school does have grounds to investigate, but there is no exact procedure because every Internet site or page is different, according to a Sherwood security member.

In instances of extreme cyberbullying, MCPS offers a cyber safety hotline and “Student Services Staff,” a team of counselors, school psychologists and social workers who can assist the victim and help prevent further cyberbullying.

“I think that most of these Facebook pages are harmless and just serve as nuisances to whoever they regard. I think that punishment should be dealt out if someone continuously hurts someone’s feelings or refuses to take an offensive page down,” said sophomore Cassidy Gahles, another girl found on the “Bait” page.