About Bullying and Cyber-bullying

Not every state requires that colleges and universities enact regulations thatprotect students against bullying, although things are rapidly changing.

• It is a little-known fact that colleges and universities can lose federal funding from the Department of Education if they do not have anti-harassment rules that are clearly communicated to students
• The Tyler Clementi Anti-Harassment Act has been re-introduced in Congress. If passed, the bill will require all colleges that receive federal funding to put in place policies that prohibit harassment of students based on their gender, race, color, national origin, disability status, sexual orientation, sex or gender identity. Students must be made explicitly aware of this policy and also are to be given guidelines on how to report an incident should they become victims of bullying, cyber bullying and harassment
• College students are adults and are often tried as adults in civil and criminal cases pertaining to hazing, harassment and bullying

Although many college students think of bullying as a joke made in good fun, the law often don’t see it in those terms. For instance, Dhuran Ravi, one of the two students responsible for cyberbullying Tyler Clementi, faced bias, invasion of privacy, witness and evidence tampering charges, along with several others. The “joke” he played on his roommate was not good fun: it was murder.