Inter-school conference on Cyber Bullying

Courage is fire, and bullying is smoke. - Benjamin Disraeli

On 17 January, 2014, Birla Vidya Niketan held an inter-school conference on Cyber bullying in association with the Centre against Cyber Bullying. Our 5 students namely Anish Bhat, Surbhi Bhatt, Hema Chakraborty, Seitu Chauhan and Luvditya Khurana of class 11 accompanied by School counsellor Ms. Sukhmeen Cheema participated in this conference where Mr. Vineet Joshi, Chairman, CBSE was chief guest.

The vision of the inter-school conference was to assemble manifold perspectives on how best to build greater awareness about cyber bullying amongst the various stakeholders in the education system. This included students, teachers, schools, administrators, parents etc. The programme started with students' perspective on the issue.

This was followed by, Mr. Pavan Duggal, Advocate, Supreme Court, who counselled the children and discussed the 'empowering and preserving of Indian childhood' from cyber- bullying and other related cyber crimes. He also had an open house discussion with the students on specific case-studies he had dealt with. He was keen to empower school children to recognise cyber- bullying and effectively handle it. He differented between what was bullying in the past and cyber- bullying in the present.

Ms. Astha Sharma, counsellor at the host school showing an audio- visual with real life cases. She spoke about the need to create peer educators for cyber bullying.

We were happy to have Mr. Sanjay Bahl, Consultant, CERT-IN, Department of Electronics and Information Technology with us who came up with appropriate recommendations for the Government of India to take steps to address the increasing menace of cyber- bullying. This was followed by an open question- answer session between students, accompanying teachers and Mr. Bahl.

Finally, Ms. Ameeta Mulla Wattal, Chairperson NPSC offered her thoughts and gave suggestions to create a network of Indian schools and provide a single-point of contact for reference in all matters pertaining to cyber bullying. Ms. Wattal also suggested the need for collaborating with international agencies in the area of cyber- bullying.

In conclusion, Ms. Minakshi Kushwaha, Principal, Birla Vidya Niketan gave a vote of thanks.