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A punch in the eye seems so passé. Bullies these days are traveling in packs and using cyberspace to their humiliating messages online. Like the toughies of old, they are both boys and girls and they demand nothing less than total submission as the price of peace. It’s a jungle out there. For school districts, patrolling the hallways and adjacent grounds is just a start. In the 21st century, a new kind of vigilance is necessary—an expanded jurisdiction that serves to both stave off legal actions and ensure a safe and productive learning environment.

Today’s principals rely on district policy and practice to extend the presumed long arm of the law to off-campus incidents. Potentially, that could mean plunging headlong into the electronic frontier to rescue student victims and thwart cyberbullying classmates who thrive as faceless computer culprits.

A December 2009 study by Harvard University’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society found that students on the receiving end report greater emotional distress, are more likely to abuse substances, and are more frequently depressed.

School resource officers from across Alabama and the nation fielded complaints about an Internet extortionist badgering girls for nude pic­tures. Victims even created a Facebook page warning fe­males not to talk to the per­son with the username Meta­scape. Metascape turned out to be Jonathan Vance, an Alabama man who made lewd cyber re­quests of 206 girls and young women and attempted to hack into and gain control of their e-mail, Facebook and MySpace accounts, federal authorities say. He was suc­cessful in at least 53 cases.