When I walked into a session entitled “Tackling Cyberbullying Through Policy”, I was surprised to see that there were well over a dozen chairs still empty in the conference room.

Judith Schurmacher, a school board member with the North Salem school district, was surprised too.

Schurmacher said that she personally didn’t know of cyberbullying in her district, but if it happens, she said, “I want to be ready.”

By about 15 minutes into the session, most of the seats were filled and there was also no shortage of crowd participation.

When Jessica Goldstein, a senior policy consultant with NYSSBA, asked the crowd to define popular abbreviations teens use when talking to their peers online, many (though by far, not everyone) responded aloud and in unison, correctly identifying “OMG” as meaning “Oh my God”, “WU” as “What’s up?”, “GTG” as “got to go” and, perhaps most importantly, “PAW” as “parents are watching.”

“You guys are sharp,” Goldstein said. “This is awesome.”

The seminar included some discussion of the nexus between school and online bullying that takes place after school hours. The presenters said that while school officials may not be able to discipline students for the cyberbullying that they do from the comforts of their home computers, it might make sense at to bring the cyberbully, his/her victim and their parents in for a meeting at school anyway. It could be the case that the cyberbully’s online antics are related to frustration over bullying that he or she has personally experienced at school—perhaps at the hands of the child who later became the cyberbullying victim. How’s that for role reversal?

More later. GTG.