For David Zhao, it was the mockery of fellow students when he entered the sixth grade as a foreign student.
For Samuel Lam, it was the racist slurs plastered across his Facebook page during his last year of middle school.
Both Jericho high school seniors have a personal stake in anti-bullying activism.
They took action last year, co-founding the End to Cyber Bullying Organization – a student-directed nonprofit designed to stop online teasing and abuse among teenagers.
“Ultimately, we know what cyber bullying feels like and we know that it hurts,” said Lam.
The group gives presentations on bullying prevention and runs a Web site that contains statistics and prevention information on cyber bullying and is targeted at teachers, students and the general public. The organization also connects bullied teens to support groups and counseling resources.
“The mission for the organization itself is to raise awareness… and show how we can prevent cyber bullying,” said Zhao.
Lam described the organization, which began as a project in a school health class, as a reaction to what he and Zhao see as a national problem – bullying of the sort implicated in the suicide of Rutgers student Tyler Clementi, whose intimate webcam encounters were secretly recorded and mocked by his roommate.
Cyber bullying has drawn national attention in recent years and has been linked to the several teen suicides. Phoebe Prince, a 15-year old high school student from South Hadley, Mass., commited suicide in 2010 after being bullied both in person and online; like in the Clementi case, the alleged bullies were prosecuted by authorities.
Deaths have been attributed to cyber bullying for nearly a decade. Ryan Halligan, 13, hung himself in 2003 after bullying from classmates that included harassment via instant message; Megan Meier, 13, killed herself in 2006 after being bullied on social network Myspace.
While the organization focuses its efforts on the darker side of online communication, its goal is to use the internet to help stop bullying.
“We’re all connected online – Facebook, Youtube, Twitter… so it’s kind of been a way to use social media to integrate and connect it,” said Lam. “The power of theinternet is really becoming phenomenal.”
The organization has a sizable social media presence. Its Twitter account, which posts anti-bullying messages and quotations on personal inspiration and ethics, has over 35,000 followers; its Facebook page has 36,000 ‘likes.’
With that online visibility comes connections with bullying victims, who Zhao said reach out to the group for support.
“We’ve received about 100,000 emails from the start – [including] very personal emails,” he said. “We feel great that we can offer support to people who have been victimized online.”
The organization hosted a kick-off event Oct. 3 at the Garden City Hotel to grow support and highlight the group’s activities.
Lam said that it was attended by about 100 people, including Jeff Ervine, president of the Internet Defamation Foundation, and Miss New York 2011 Kaitlin Monte, who has worked with the group on anti-bullying activism.
Zhao and Lam started the group when they were 16 years old, and youth leadership is a cornerstone of the organization. They said that the group’s efforts are run entirely by volunteer students, with the exception of the organization’s legal affairs.
““We want to give teenagers and youth the ability to make a difference in the community,” said Lam.
“Being 16 at the time was never an issue for us,” Zhao said.
